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