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The UK government has launched a wide-ranging consultation on the UK’s designs framework, aimed at reforming and modernising design law to stimulate growth, creativity, and innovation in the designs sector. In this article, we explore the key topics of the consultation and what comes next.
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The UK government has launched a wide-ranging consultation on the UK’s designs framework, aimed at reforming and modernising design law to stimulate growth, creativity, and innovation in the designs sector. The consultation, which can be found here, touches almost every aspect of design law and includes proposals to overhaul many legal and procedural aspects of design protection in the UK.
This represents a very rare opportunity for the UK design community to directly influence the direction of government policy, so it is crucial that all interested businesses and organisations take the chance to provide their views. The outcomes from the consultation will be used to fundamentally re-structure designs practice and legislation for the coming decades.
The key topics of the consultation are:
- Search, examination, and opposition of registered design applications by the IPO At present, the IPO does not search for prior art or examine on substantive issues, resulting in a fast, low-cost system. However, critics of this system feel that this allows for anti-competitive behaviour as well as low-quality and invalid designs to be registered, and that the effort and cost to invalidate a registered design is disproportionate to the ease of registration. Respondents are asked to consider various scenarios in which it might be appropriate for the IPO to perform its searching and examination of its own volition, and a number of options for pre- or post-registration opposition or observation periods on allowability. There are also proposals to include bad faith as an explicit ground of invalidity.
- Simplification of unregistered design rights There are various overlapping unregistered rights that can protect designs in the UK, and the consultation proposes simplifying this landscape. The current patchwork of unregistered rights includes some of the most powerful tools for combatting copycats, in part because of the substantive nuances of each different right. Heavy-handed consolidation should be approached with caution to avoid weakening protection for designs in the UK.
- Graphical user interfaces and animated designs There are significant challenges in robustly protecting GUIs and animations in the UK via design rights. The government proposes to reform and modernise design law to ensure that digital designs can be protected just as well as their physical counterparts.
- Evidence gathering regarding criminal sanctions for design infringement Over a decade ago, criminal sanctions were introduced for registered design infringement, which remains highly contentious. While the consultation does not explicitly propose criminal sanctions for unregistered design infringement, it does invite respondents to provide evidence that can be used to guide policy in this area.
- Changes to deferment The publication of a UK registered designs can currently be deferred by a maximum of 12 months, meaning some companies face a dilemma between obtaining an early date of filing and keeping their designs confidential until product launch. The consultation invites views on alternative frameworks and timescales for delaying publication and registration balancing realistic product lead-times and certainty for third
- Post-Brexit disclosure rules As it stands, designers who operate in the EU and UK face a conundrum around where to first disclose their design, because disclosing first in one of these locations could prevent the existence of unregistered rights in the other. The consultation proposes changes to resolve this problem, including the option of a disclosure grace period for unregistered designs or potentially even giving rise to unregistered protection in the UK regardless of where in the world the design is first disclosed.
- Computer-generated designs Use of AI tools is ever-increasing, and the consultation seeks views on how computer-generated designs should be handled in the design law framework.
- Registered designs in the IPEC Small Claims track The government proposes to allow registered designs disputes to be handled in the IPEC Small Claims track. This appears to be sensible, given that disputes relating to other more complex IP rights (like copyright and trade marks) can already be handled via this route.
- Miscellaneous topics A number of other minor issues are covered, which emphasises the consultation’s broad scope and generational opportunity for change.
What next?
The deadline for responses to the consultation is 27 November 2025. If you have views on how designs are protected in the UK, then the IPO wants to hear from you. Responses need not comment on every topic, so you should consider submitting a response even if you are only interested in a subset of the issues raised.
Greg Sharp is a member of the Chartered Institute of Patent Attorneys (CIPA) Designs & Copyright Committee and will be working alongside other members of the Committee to craft CIPA’s response to the consultation.
If you would like any advice regarding the consultation or how the proposed changes might affect your business, then please get in touch with Greg or another member of our Design Group.
Need assistance?
This is for general information only and does not constitute legal advice. Should you require advice on this or any other topic then please contact hlk@hlk-ip.com or your usual HLK advisor.