The government has announced an overhaul of the rules protecting British design to make protection and enforcement simpler, cheaper, and prevent people copying designs or registering works that are not their own.
The proposals come in response to a 2025 consultation led by the Intellectual Property Office (IPO), which found that the burden of resolving legal issues created via design registration disproportionately falls on individual businesses: some reporting spending between £10,000 and £50,000.
The government said it will introduce legislation to give the IPO powers to consider whether a design is genuinely new before it is registered to stop people exploiting the design registration system. It will also consider bringing forward legislation to give the IPO clear powers to refuse bad-faith design applications.
Currently, it is possible to register designs created by someone else, copy a competitor’s product images or marketing materials, or file designs for generic or well-known products the person registering had no hand in creating.
Presently, registered design cases must go through the Patents Court or Intellectual Property Enterprise Court (IPEC) multi-track, which can put legal action beyond the reach of smaller businesses or individuals. The government plans to allow registered design cases to be heard in the IPEC Small Claims Track for the first time, which is a simpler, lower cost, legal route.
Under the proposals, the government said it wants to introduce greater protection for digital designs and animation, plus a new 30-month deferrment period, meaning designers will be able to apply for protection early and delay making their design public for up to 30 months. It also wants to change the law so that supplementary unregistered design protection can apply when a design is disclosed anywhere in the world - a descrepancy that has put UK designers at a disadvantage since Brexit.
Matthijs Branderhorst, partner, patent attorney and design expert at IP specialist firm Marks & Clerk, said: 'The package addresses several long-standing concerns, including protection for digital designs, bad-faith filings and post-Brexit disclosure issues, while preserving the accessibility of the UK designs system. For most users, that balance is likely to be viewed positively.’
The design sector includes 80,000 businesses, the majority of which are classed ‘micro-businesses’ as they employ fewer than nine people. It contributed close to £137 billion to the economy in 2023.
Chris McDonald MP, intellectual property minister, said: ‘Our reforms will make protecting their hard work simpler, so designers spend less time bogged down in admin and more time unleashing the creativity that drives them, and ultimately benefits us all through innovative products and services.’
The government said it will introduce these legislative changes ‘when parliamentary time allows’.
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