DESIGN

DESIGN REGISTRATION
A market loaded with similar products, its tough to stand distinguished. A unique design will stand out from the crowd and gets easily noticed.

Estate Registration may assist you through the process of protecting your design rights by assisting you in determining what can — and what can’t — be protected, either through registered or unregistered rights.

Where registration is appropriate we take care of the actual filing process, making sure it is done correctly, efficiently and swiftly, so that you become a proud owner of your unique identifier and now even capable to assert your design rights whenever and wherever need arise.

Advantages of Design registration:

– Designs should not be seen as an alternative to patents but as a complementary protection.

– Design registration is cheaper to obtain than patent protection and the application procedure is far shorter.

– If the expected life-time of a product is short, and the product will be simple to produce, the design registration may be more useful than patents.

– Action can be taken against an infringer and, unlike with copyright, actual copying of the protected design is not required to be proved.

How to register a design?

An application for registration of design is to be filed before the Controller General of Patents, Designs and Trademarks. Photographs of the articles from various angles must be filed along with an affidavit stating the novelty of the article. The prescribed registration fee must be appended to the application.

If the Controller General of Patents, Designs and Trademarks raises any objections to the application, they must promptly be replied to by the applicant.
On registration, all specifications of the design are published by the Controller.
Public opposition to the design at the time of filing for registration is not available under the Design Act, but oppositions are entertained after registration has been granted.
In case the Controller General of Patents, Designs and Trademarks rejects the application, the applicant may approach the concerned State’s High Court to seek relief.

Protection from Infringement

Like trademarks, designs too are also susceptible to infringement mostly along the lines of passing off. It is an illegal act to make use of a registered design, or a fraudulent or obvious imitation of a registered design, without authorization from the registered owner of such design.

In case of such an infringement, the registered owner may file a suit to recover a nominal sum as damages from the infringer, and also ask that the infringement stop taking place.

In order to ascertain infringement, the Court or any adjudicatory body need not directly compare the two articles, but look at them from the point of view of the average customer and see if the two are causing an obvious confusion in the minds of the consumer.

Contact Estate Registration for more details!