The UK Patent Office has announced that it will adopt recent
proposals to ensure that the Community design system, which came
into force in April 2003, functions properly within the UK. The
Patent Office has been consulting on the issue.
Since April 2003, EU businesses have been able to protect their
designs Europe-wide by registering them with the Office for
Harmonisation in the Internal Market (OHIM), based in Alicante, or
with the UK Patent Office.
A fee of €230 buys exclusive rights to use the design for five
years, renewable for up to 25 years, together with protection
throughout the EU against both deliberate and inadvertent
copying.
In September last year the Patent Office launched a consultation
on the measures it proposed to take to ensure that the Community
designs system works properly within the UK and to create more
consistency with the UK’s own registered design system.
In particular, the consultation focused on proposals to:
- Make it an offence to falsely claim in the UK that a design had
Community design protection;
- Provide redress against groundless threats of Community design
infringement;
- Give “privileged” status to communications with certain
professional representatives – who need not also be patent or trade
mark agents
- Create Crown use provisions to cover community designs needed
for essential defence or security purposes; and
- Designate Community designs courts.
The Patent Office received few responses to its consultation and
on Friday announced that it is taking this to mean that most of the
issues had been resolved during earlier negotiations. It said it
will proceed on the basis of the proposals in its consultation.
