Design Registration: The Optimal Way To Protect Your Design

Companies are investing in their visual identity to differentiate from competitors. This investment needs protection and design registration is the key to protect the physical appearance of a design.

Several other rights than design registration may be available for product design protections such as copyright, trademarks in form of shape marks/3D marks, unregistered design rights and regulation as to trade dress, unfair competition law and passing off.

Challenges in protecting your design as a trademark or claiming copyright to the design

The available IP rights can be cumulative, but design registration must always be considered, having focus on the differences in these rights. While copyright requires originality and creativeness, which requirements may be very difficult to prove, not least when AI have been used in the process, these requirements do not apply for designs, where the process of creation is irrelevant. Instead, design protection requires novelty and individual