Simon Clark argues that the post-Brexit situation for designers will be way worse than the current one, in an article published in the IP Magazine, March 2019.

“The UK Intellectual Property Office (UK IPO) has announced that the new supplementary right will only subsist in a new design if the design is first disclosed in the UK. This means that for fashion companies that usually launch their new designs in Paris, or furniture companies that first reveal their new ranges at the Milan Furniture Fair, their new designs will not be protected by the supplementary right in the UK.

For UK companies, this means that they will be left having to either prove their designs are protected by copyright as works of artistic craftsmanship (or possibly in the case of articles such as furniture, as sculptures), or rely on the traditional UK unregistered design right (under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988) which only protects shape and not surface decoration.”

Please read the full PDF article here. This article was first published in May 2019 on IP Magazine, printed issue.