Designs (International Registration of Industrial Designs) Order 2017

Lord Clement-Jones Excerpts

Wednesday 6th December 2017 Grand Committee

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, I cannot guarantee to be a ray of sunshine this afternoon but I will give it a good try. I was quite surprised that despite the invitation on the consultation being from the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, only 10 responses were actually received. That is a bit sad because it shows that there is not a great deal of understanding about the benefits of this kind of Hague registration, so my first question to the Minister is: what visibility will this have after its adoption, given our ability to have business register designs under the Hague arrangements?

Secondly, this appears to be a bit of an IPO-lite solution. Filing, as I understand it, will not be directly with the IPO but with WIPO itself. I am also a little confused by the response to the consultation in terms of how publication will take place and the search mechanisms that will be in place for those kinds of registered designs. Those will be quite important if the system is to be accessible and if we are to get all the benefits that the Minister waxed so lyrical about during his introduction. I share many of his sentiments because I believe that proper design protection is extremely important. We have had many happy hours debating this over the last two years and I am of course a great believer in unregistered design, as well as registered design.

Moving on, it is clear that whether or not one is a great fan of the Hague registration system, it is not as comprehensive as the registered Community designs right. The fashion industry has been making increasing use of registered Community design because it covers surface decoration and a number of other aspects of design.

The last government word on this—this is a Brexit-related aspect—was that:

“The government is exploring various options”—


that is, how one addresses the fact that we will not be a member of the EU in relation to registered Community design rights—

“and are discussing these with users of the system to establish the best way forward”.

The Minister may not be able to tell me very much at this point, but I wonder whether he has anything to say on the matter by way of a follow-up letter. It is all part of the kind of protection package that designers, and businesses that make use of design and want to protect designs, find extremely important. There is quite a lot of anxiety about it. I will not quote all the commentary on the matter, but one comment I read recently said:

“Without an agreement to the contrary, community rights, such as registered and unregistered community designs and EU trade marks (previously community trade marks), will no longer have effect in the UK. Ultimately the scope of any rights applied for will not include the UK, and there remain questions about what will happen to the “UK portion” of such rights obtained before Brexit”.


There are some quite complicated issues here. My question is whether, as well as doing wonderful things like signing up to the Hague system, the work is apace and those options are really being unpacked in relation to the Community design right.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lords, Lord Stevenson and Lord Clement-Jones, for their responses. As they said, it will be important that I write with a little more detail on this. I certainly promise to do so. The noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, was alarmed about the visibility of the Intellectual Property Office and of these matters more generally.

[Lord Clement-Jones]

I am a huge fan of the IPO. I merely say that it has reduced the fees for registered designs. That made me even more of a fan, but I am concerned about the visibility of the Hague system.

[Lord Henley]

I am grateful that the noble Lord said that because I was going to refer to the exchange between my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe and the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, on the Intellectual Property Office, which showed that it is doing a good job. One should give it credit for that, but I take the noble Lord’s point that this is really more about the visibility of the Hague system. I am not sure there is much we can do other than to continue our engagement with business representatives about these matters to promote the importance of Hague and designs in general. We will continue to do that.

As the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, asked, we will also continue to promote the benefits of registration. We know that registrations with the UK IPO are rising. Since we reduced the fees in October 2016, as referred to in the most recent intervention by the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, we have seen an increase of more than 100%. There is always more to do to raise awareness, and we will do what we can through programmes of business outreach. We want to get over the message that it is important for businesses to register when it would be of benefit to them, and we will continue to do that.

As I have said, I would prefer to go into greater detail on these matters in a letter to both noble Lords, but I am grateful for their general support and recognition that we want to approve the order today and see how we get on thereafter.