Singapore's design protection regime was
expanded significantly in 2017 to provide greater
protection for designers, and to keep pace with developments in
technology. As part of this change, it has become possible to
register designs for non-physical products.
A “non-physical product” is defined as any thing
that:
(i) does not have a physical form;
(ii) is produced by the projection of a design on a
surface or into a medium (including air); and
(iii) has an intrinsic utilitarian function that is not
merely to portray the appearance of the thing or to convey
information.
New guidelines for what constitutes a registrable non-physical
design
To assist designers to better understand the type of
non-physical product in respect of which design registrations can
be obtained, IPOS has now released a set of
guidelines.
