Companies have begun the process of understanding the new intellectual property act, which came into force last week, bringing with it wide-ranging changes to previous legislation.
Under the changes, intentional copying of a registered design has been made a criminal offence, rather than a civil offence, bringing with it the potential for fines and in the most serious cases imprisonment.
In order to protect companies a number of safeguards have been introduced, which provide defences if the design was copied accidentally, incidentally or unintentionally; if there were good reasons to believe the registered design was not being infringed; or there were good reasons to believe the registered design was invalid.
Unregistered designs have also have seen a number of changes, and while a whole design and parts of design can still be protected, a part which forms a trivial part of the original design, is no longer afforded any protection
The eligibility criteria for unregistered designs to qualify for protection has also been simplified, giving more people the chance to protect their intellectual property/
In particular designs created in a foreign jurisdiction, which is not a “qualifying country” (EU member states and a number of small countries with a traditional relationship with the UK), are no longer to require to have first marketing exclusively authorised.
Opening the possibility of a loophole that would enable an unauthorised party to first market a product in the UK or other qualifying country to obtain the unregistered design right, and taking a foreign company’s right to sell their own products in the UK away.
Companies also need to be aware of changes that see the default ownership in commissioned cases, switched from the commissioner to the owner, bringing the UK in line with the European and copyright systems.
It is therefore important both for designers and commissioners to be aware of the ownership status of designs created after 1 October 2014.
Understand these changes are important to any company that deals with the marketing of products and concepts in the UK market.
They are being advised to seek the advice of a solicitor to see how the changes will affect their business and intellectual property.