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If you own a business, there is a good chance you may have both trade marks and designs you want to protect. Combining different forms of intellectual property rights can be an effective way to protect your designs and also your brand identity. This article will distinguish between design rights and trade marks. It will then discuss the benefit of combining design and trade mark protection.
What Are Design Rights?
Design rights protect a product’s visual appearance, including its shape, colour and configuration. In effect, where you obtain design rights over a product, the law restricts the use of its colours, shapes, textures, and materials. You do not need to register design rights to obtain legal protection. However, you obtain automatic protection by registering your design rights with the Intellectual Property Office (IPO). You can therefore sue anyone using the design without your permission without having to establish ownership.
To register a design, you must demonstrate to the IPO that your design is individual in character and new to the market. You can register a single aspect of your design provided you highlight this. Design rights exist for up to 25 years and must be renewed every 5 years. During this time, you will hold exclusive rights to the registered design. As a result, no other organisation or individual can use it without your consent.
What Are Trade Marks?
A trade mark is an identifier of your business or brand and distinguishes your particular goods or services within your area of trade. They can form any combination of words, slogans, colours, logos, symbols, and sounds.
Like design rights, you do not need to register a trade mark with the IPO to benefit from certain protections. However, registration grants you stronger protection over your trade marks. Registered trade marks must be unique and cannot resemble trade marks already registered with the IPO.
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How Can I Combine Both Design Rights and Trade Marks?
Branding and product design are intertwined concepts regarding intellectual property protection. Therefore, both design rights and trade marks can prove useful separately and also together to equip your business and products with maximum protection.
Design rights and trade marks can protect different features of a business. You can use a trade mark to protect the logo or symbol of a particular product and then use design rights to protect the visual appearance of those particular products. They can be used in tandem, an important tool for businesses in a busy market.
Benefits of Combining Design and Trade Marks
Using both types of intellectual property rights strengthens your rights over your branding. This means that if you have both design rights and trade marks registered within your business, it will be extremely difficult for any competitor to attempt to copy any element of your business.
For example, if you run a successful footwear business and wish to protect a particular style of shoe, you can do this by applying for design rights at the IPO. At the same time, your product may have a unique logo that distinguishes it from competitors. That is a trade mark.
If you register both simultaneously, you will assert maximal protection over both forms of intellectual property.
Key Takeaways
The law distinguishes between design rights and trade marks. Design rights protect the visual appearance of a product including the colour, texture, components or materials. Trade marks identify your brand to consumers and usually comes in the form of a word, logo, symbol or sound or any combination of these. By registering both design rights and trade marks with the IPO, you will assert maximal protection over both forms of intellectual property.
If you need help deciding whether to register a trade mark or design right, our experienced intellectual property lawyers can assist as part of our LegalVision membership. For a low monthly fee, you will have unlimited access to lawyers to answer your questions and draft and review your documents. Call us today on 0808 196 8584 or visit our membership page.
Frequently Asked Questions
You can choose to register design rights or trade marks and both can exist in an unregistered nature. However, you will gain exclusivity over your design right or trade mark if you register them and also gain legal rights to be able to challenge another business for infringement.
Design rights and trade marks are mutually exclusive and independent of one another. Design rights protect the visual appearance of a product whereas a trade mark protects the brand identity such as a logo or symbol of the business. Therefore, neither is stronger as each is used for different purposes.
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