Indian Design Office, placed among top ten design offices across the world, registered the highest growth rate among the top twenty jurisdictions in 2024 in terms of filings of design applications1. However, the Indian Designs Act, 2000 (‘the Designs Act’) which came into being more than twenty five years ago, has not seen any substantial amendments since its passing.
With the objective of modernising India’s design protection framework and aligning it with international best practices, the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT), Ministry of Commerce & Industry, has recently released a Concept Note (‘the Note’) proposing amendments to the Designs Act. This article aims to capture the proposed reforms in the Designs Act.
Virtual Design Protection
The current design framework only protects tangible objects and visual features applied to such objects. However, with the ongoing evolution of technology, design protection is not limited to physical goods. To address the gap in protection of virtual designs subsisting in graphical user interfaces, icons, animated characters and immersive virtual environments, the Note proposes to clarify and modernise the definitions of “design” and “article” to expressly enable protection of virtual designs, independent of any physical carrier.
DPIIT has proposed expanding the definition of “design” by broadening the scope as well as meaning of “industrial process” and by expressly including animation, movement, and transition. It has also proposed revising the definition of “article” to expressly cover items in physical or non-physical form, including graphical user interfaces, icons, graphic symbols, typefaces, augmented reality graphical user interfaces, and other virtual products.
Design-Copyright Interface
The Note also proposes to resolve the conflict due to overlap in protection under the Designs Act as well as the Copyright Act, 1957 (‘the Copyright Act’). As per the current regime, while a design that is registered under the Designs Act is expressly excluded from copyright protection2, there is ambiguity in relation to works that are capable of being registered as designs but which have not been so registered and are applied to articles through an industrial process. Section 15(2) of the Copyright Act says that copyright protection for designs that are registrable under the Designs Act but remain unregistered, shall cease as soon as any article to which the design has been applied has been reproduced more than fifty times by an industrial process.
Disclaimer: This update is for general information purposes only. It does not purport to provide comprehensive legal or other advice. The publisher and the contributors accept no responsibility for losses that may arise from reliance upon information contained in these publications.
