Jurisdiction(s):
United Kingdom

Related legal acts

Key definition

Design right definition

What does Design right mean? In practice, design right describes the legal protection for the appearance or shape of products and parts. In the UK (England & Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland), it is a statutory right: the unregistered design right under Part III of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. It arises automatically for original designs of the shape or configuration (excluding surface decoration), lasts for the earlier of 10 years from first marketing or 15 years from creation (with a licence of right in the final five years), and requires a qualifying designer or first marketing in a qualifying country. The UK...

Post-Brexit UK design rights compared: registered, re-registered (EU/international) and unregistered (UK and SUD)—scope, subsistence, duration, infringement, defences and threats

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Practice notes

Design Rights

The tables in this Practice Note outline the principal distinctions between the different unregistered and registered design rights in the UK. The design rights presently available in the UK are:

UK registered designs (including re-registered designs and re-registered international designs)
UK unregistered design right (also referred to as ‘design right’)
supplementary unregistered design right (SUD)

Each right varies by eligibility requirements, scope, and the length of protection, as set out in the table below. This Practice Note addresses the UK design rights in force after IP completion day (11.00 pm on 31 December 2020). For details on the position before IP completion day, see Practice Note: Design rights before and after Brexit—comparison table. For information on the EU design framework, see Practice Note: EU designs, and for how the UK and EU regimes are diverging post-Brexit, see Practice Note: Designs—UK/EU comparison. For further detail on the various UK design rights noted above, see Practice Notes: UK registered and unregistered designs, and for the intersections with copyright protection, see Practice Note: Copyright in designs...

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Web page updated on 21/05/2026

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