Consultation on UK law of design protection

The proposed changes include:

• Provision to apply for any number of new designs under one application. Currently, applicants are limited to one design per application, so this will have cost benefits.
• Provision to delay the publication (and subsequent registration) of a design application for up to 12 months, to give applicants time to launch new products incorporating their designs onto the market. Currently, there is no statutory provision to delay publication once the application is in order to proceed.

The deadline for opinions is 7th October 2005.