6 September 2013

In May 2012, ACIP was directed to investigate the effectiveness of the Designs Act 2003 which commenced operation on 17 June 2004.

Now ACIP has published an issues paper.

Chapter 3 sets out 22 questions ACIP is seeking answers to. However, ACIP does also say:

the main purpose of the paper is to provoke discussion and any other relevant comments are very welcome.

The topics identified (so far) for comment include:

• Duration of design protection
• Grace period
• Statement of Newness and Distinctiveness
• Publication
• Unregistered Designs Rights (UDRs)
• Harmonisation with international practices (i.e. The Hague Agreement)
• Border Protection Measures
• Design overlap with other IP rights
• Threshold of registrability
• Confusion regarding the registration/publication/examination process;
• The (potential) impact of new technologies, such as 3D printing technologies and graphical user interfaces.

There are some interesting statistics:

• about 6,000 design applications filed each year (the Germans do 50,000+ a year, the Chinese are a whole order of magnitude bigger)
• 90% proceed to registration (wonder how the other 10% manage to stuff up filling in the form?)
• 20% of registrations have examination requested (so you can sue someone for infringement or try and revoke them)
• 10% of those examined fail (i.e., 90% get certified)

Table 4 sets out the classes in which most applications are being made and Table 5 outs those who file the most applications.

The closing date for submissions is 31 October 2013.

Download the issues paper from here (pdf).

Lid dip: Janice Luck