Government Consults on a Reduction to Registered Design Fees

A Government consultation launched on 7 January focuses on proposed reductions to UK Registered Design fees and is a way of addressing the tendency of designers to simply file Community Registered Designs which cover the UK. The proposals could result in large savings for those in the design field and encourage wider protection in the UK via the registration of multiple designs for individual products.

Proposed Reductions

Full details of the proposal, which will apply only to designs registered online, can be found in the consultation here. In summary, the proposed reduction in renewal fees over 50% where-as the reductions in filing fees for single designs is reduced from £60 to £50. However, the more designs contained in an application, the greater the saving – whilst the filing fee for a single design is proposed to be reduced to £50, the proposed filing fee for an application containing up to 20 designs is only £90.

Impact on Designers

The reductions could represent huge savings for those wishing to make bulk design filings, for example for a furniture range or inter-connecting furniture. It will also make it more affordable for designers to benefit from wider protection of a product by registering different parts of a product as separate designs – offering greater protection against infringers seeking to skirt around the edges of registered designs.

In respect of renewal fees, whilst the reductions are considerable (over 50%), a large proportion of designs are not renewed after their initial 5 year period. Indeed, maybe that is what the greatest proposed reduction seeks to address.

The consultation is open for comment and responses until 29 January 2016 and can be found here.