Registered Designs are a useful add-on, and sometimes alternative to Patents. Designs are used to protect any new or existing product to protect any new shape, configuration, pattern or ornamentation. Because we get asked so much about designs, we’ve written an entire page on designs here as well.
Certified Designs for products protect and allow you to enforce any new visual appearance of existing products, or novel products. For example novel whiskey glasses, new vehicle part shapes, mobile phone covers, bicycle helmet designs, and so forth.
Under Australian Design Law, and the act, the total term for a Registered Design is 10 years. Design protection can be extended in overseas countries provided you meet the time limits specified by the Paris Convention.
Be very careful as the drawings may look correct, but not provide sufficient legal clarity to be successful with enforcement. A Patent Attorney works with specialised Technical illustrators and the designer to ensure that all of the application is optimised. You cannot go back and re-lodge or amend once the Design is lodged and published.
We often find drawings which have not been specified correctly, and are NOT enforceable, so be careful with this. It is not the role of IP Australia to work out if the design drawings will create an enforcement case, rather they check whether the drawings meet the clarity requirements.
