Intellectual Property Bill [HL]

Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall Excerpts

Tuesday 11th June 2013 Grand Committee

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara]

My Lords, I welcome the Minister and his team and thank them for the contribution they have already made to our understanding of these complex matters. Design rights are not easy, and it has been a bit of a learning curve for many of us. They have been extremely helpful so far, and I hope that we can work together to improve the Bill.

In Russell-Clarke and Howe on Industrial Designs, Martin Howe describes this as an area of law of “labyrinthine complexity”. Professor Cornish calls it “an absurd maze”. In response to the consultation, the IP Federation stated:

“Designs legislation is very hard to grasp. The legal complexity of the design system as a whole is confusing and hard even for advisers to handle on occasions”.

I could mention Ministers and shadow Ministers. I am sure that would have been perfectly appropriate.

The Government acknowledge that design rights law is complex and that the UK is currently out of step with other EU countries in retaining a relatively generous monopoly power provided by the unregistered designs right. However, they propose to do very little about this. The proposed reforms relate to minor matters, such as changes to the ownership of designs.

As the patents judges, Lord Justice Kitchin, Justice Floyd, Justice Arnold and His Honour Judge Birss QC, said in their response to the consultation, the amendments which have been put forward through this consultation exercise and survive in the Bill,

“represent ... piecemeal tinkering. What is urgently required is a thorough re-appraisal of UK design law as a whole in its international and European legal context followed by fresh legislation.

In particular, we note that the Consultation document recognises … that a fundamental problem with current UK designs law is that it is unduly complicated, yet it fails to make proposals which will significantly alleviate this problem. It is nothing short of ridiculous that a single design can potentially be protected by five different types of right (Community registered designs, Community unregistered design rights, UK registered designs, UK unregistered design rights and copyright)”.

The Modern Law of Copyright and Designs, which I am sure is at the bedside of the Minister, states:

“There is no reason why a proprietor should not claim design right in all aspects of the shape or configuration of his article which he believes could give him a commercial edge over his competitors.

In particular, when it comes to suing a competitor for infringement he will be well-advised to rely, individually and collectively, upon each of those separate aspects of shape or configuration which appear to have been copied by the competitor.

Needless to say, a statutory monopoly which allows the proprietor to mix and match in this way and which deprives a potential infringer of any way of knowing the scope of the exclusive rights which he faces unless and until the proprietor defines precisely what are alleged to be his design rights is ripe for abuse”.

Finally in this overview, Lord Justice Jacob stated in a case in 2006 that:

“UDR can subsist in the ‘design of any aspect of the shape or configuration (whether internal or external) of the whole or part of an article’. This is extremely wide—it means that a particular article may and generally will embody a multitude of ‘designs’—as many aspects of the whole or part of the article as can be. What the point was of defining ‘design’ in this way, I do not know. The same approach is not adopted for ordinary copyright where the work is treated as a whole”.

I make these points at length as they are important for the context of some of the debate we will be having on these earlier groups, which are largely around two aspects of the Government’s proposals. The first is, why have they chosen to pull back from the decision they originally had in mind during the consultation exercise to abandon the unregistered design right, or at least combine it with the community unregistered design right, a measure that would at least have some logic to it? They have chosen not to do so and we wish to probe that. Secondly, why is there tentativeness in their proposals to try to provide a commonality of approach between the registered and unregistered design routes?

A registered design has a ring to it because those in authority have seen, opined upon and sufficiently thought well of the design presented to them that they have registered it, much in the way that a small “c” with a circle around it has denoted copyright. The truth is that a registered design is nothing of the sort and seems to be a mainly bureaucratic exercise. The article has not been made but the design is registered simply on the basis of a submission and payment of a fee to the registry. I simplify to make the point but that is the essence of it. At the same time, and organically, the unregistered design right has grown up over the years and has provided a sensible and appropriate way, particularly in design industries such as fashion, effectively of securing a monopoly power for people to use in a way that will allow them to get a return on the investment of their creativity and money.

Our amendments are trying to help the Government in the sense that if the UDR is retained it would be a half-way point, as I have hinted, to combining it more closely with EU design law. I should be grateful for responses from the Minister on that. In support of my suggestion, I simply provide two more quotations. On the question of whether one should think about combining across Europe a single unregistered design process, the FICPI has stated:

“We believe having different eligibility requirements is complicated and not appropriate when IP is generally handled in a European policy framework ... we would prefer to see more radical harmonisation with EU design law to introduce the tests of novelty and individual character, rather than retaining different tests”.

These are points to which we will return in later amendments. The Chartered Institute of Patent Attorneys agrees that,

“clarifying and limiting the current protection for any ‘aspect’ of the design of a ‘part’ of an article would reduce the tendency to overstate the breadth of UDR”.

The Government have come forward with the proposals that underlie the first part of the Bill. Previously in the consultation, they had suggested that there would be a considerable advantage in reviewing and simplifying the design area. That started with the Hargreaves report, which pointed out the complexity to which I referred. Instead, we have proposals that are much the same as before but with a few minor changes. We are not getting the sort of clarity that would help the industry to support the growth in our design capacity, contribute to our creative economy and improve the economic prospects of this country. The essence of these amendments is: why are the Government not considering modifying the test for infringement at least to be aligned with the community unregistered design right? I beg to move.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees]

I should advise the Committee that if this amendment is agreed, I cannot call Amendment 2 by reason of pre-emption.