Law Gazette reports that the Intellectual Property Office is to be given new legislative powers allowing it to assess whether a design is genuinely new before registering it. According to the report, this marks a shift from the current system, giving the office the ability to scrutinise originality more closely at the point of application.
, EAC Network Solutions: For architects, manufacturers and other firms in our region who rely on registered designs, this change makes it more important than ever to be able to show when a design was actually created, not just when it was filed. If the IPO starts examining novelty more closely, the strength of your claim may come down to having clear, dated records of design files, drawings and revisions. Firms should think about how their document systems capture and preserve that history, including version control and file metadata, rather than relying on folder structures or email trails that are easy to lose or dispute. Getting this right now, before any dispute arises, is far easier than trying to reconstruct a design’s history after the fact.
Source: Law Gazette
