Industrial designs must be registered to be protected by industrial design legislation in almost all of nations. You must submit an application to the national (or regional) industrial design office of the nation (or region) where you want your industrial design to be protected.
The owner of an industrial design is given exclusive rights against unlawful reproduction and imitation by third parties when the design is protected through registration. This includes the right to forbid anyone from producing, under offering, importing, exporting, or selling any goods that contain or use the registered design. The real extent of a registered design right’s protection are set by laws and customs in the nation or region.
Process of registration
To register an industrial design in your country, you must take the following steps:
- Fill out the registration application from the national industrial design office. In addition, you will be requested to submit drawings and/or photographs of the design in your application (standard formats).
- In some countries, you need to submit a description or statement of the industrial design’s newness. Normally, It must be a description of the industrial design instead of a description of the product having the industrial design. The design must be wholly distinct from any similar or earlier designs. The design must include all of its distinctive aesthetic features as well as a description of its most important ones. In some nations, the appraiser may request design samples in order to better understand the design or to get a sense of the materials or structure of the design.
- Submit the required application fee.
- You could hire an industrial property agent to help you submit the application and pursue it through the registration procedure. In this case, you must also provide your representative with a paper proving the authorisation.
Some authorities register designs immediately after reviewing administrative procedures. Other authorities may check the newness and/or originality of designs basing on the available register. An increasing amount of agencies are registering designs without verifying newness and/or originality.
When a design is registered, it is added to the National Register of Industrial Designs, published in the gazette/magazine/newsletter on industrial designs, and received a Design Registration Certificate. In some nations/regions, you may request for a delay in publishing, which will keep the design confidential for a certain duration of time. For strategic business reasons, delaying publishing for a while may be appropriate.
In general, the right to submit an application for the registration of an industrial design belongs to the person who created the design, the employer, or the employee who works under contract. The applicant may be an individual (a designer) or a legal entity (a business). In any case, The application may be submitted directly or through an industrial property representative. If you are submitting an application from outside the country, you might be required to work with an industrial property agent who has been approved by the industrial property office there.
