Redesigning UK Design Law: The UK Government Responds to the Designs Consultation

The Intellectual Property Office of the United Kingdom (UKIPO) launched a design law consultation in late 2025 which was designed to review all elements of the current legal framework (including registered and unregistered designs and enforcement issues), the most comprehensive review of the UK design law regime since Brexit. Now the UK government has published its response, having considered almost 100 responses from a range of different stakeholders including businesses, representative groups, and legal representatives.

The response is broadly positive for the creative design industry as it preserves the essentials of a fast, low-cost registration system, proposes longer confidentiality for new designs, improves protection for digital designs and commits to allowing overseas launches to lead to unregistered design protection. However, as with all reform programmes, there is some uncertainty as to how and when the changes will be implemented, and some important matters—including search criteria, unregistered-right harmonisation and the detailed enforcement reforms—remain unresolved for now.

The full response can be found here but the key takeaways, particularly for international companies, are as follows:

• Retention of UK unregistered design rights and supplementary unregistered design rights
  • It had been suggested that UK unregistered design protection could be limited, but the government has chosen to retain both the original UK unregistered design rights and those created as a result of Brexit (namely, the supplementary unregistered design rights), as there was found to be utility in both. However, there are still proposals to simplify the rights, including harmonising qualification requirements and the term of protection.
• Global disclosure for supplementary unregistered design protection
  • The government has selected the option allowing a supplementary unregistered design to arise following first disclosure anywhere in the world. Currently for a design to be protected as a supplementary unregistered design it has to be first disclosed in the UK (as well as meeting other qualifying criteria). For international companies this is significant as it will open the door to US and foreign designs having supplementary unregistered design protection in the UK.
  • The selected consultation option links overseas disclosure to its coming to the attention of relevant UK trade circles—with the specifics of how this will be determined yet to be assessed. A possible grace period remains under consideration, though no particular length has been settled upon.
• Examination of registered designs to potentially include substantive examination
  • Unlike the current process whereby registered design applications in the UK are not subject to substantive examination, the UKIPO will receive powers to search and examine a proportion of applications for novelty and individual character, with guidance setting out when a search should be conducted. Importantly, this should be a targeted examination rather than an examination of every application.
  • However, the UK government has rejected the proposed two-stage system requiring examination before enforcement and has not taken up proposals for opposition and observation procedures prior to registration. A specific bad-faith ground is not yet a settled legislative commitment; further work will determine its scope, evidential threshold and whether legislation should be sought. Fast-track invalidation will also receive further consideration.
  • Whilst potentially adding to the administrative burden for applicants, this process should help prevent abuse of the registered design system by appropriating existing products or competitors’ photographs to obtain abusive registrations. However, it will be important to monitor how the examination process is applied in practice to ensure that the administrative burden does not increase significantly for filers.
• Deferment of registered designs to be extended
  • The government will introduce a statutory 30-month deferment period, replacing the current 12-month practice. It will run from the earlier of the priority date and UK filing date and will continue to defer both registration and publication. The applicant’s and representative’s names and addresses, filing date and priority date will be published during deferment. Whether Locarno Classification information should also be published remains under consideration.
  • The longer deferment period should better accommodate design development cycles and allow closer coordination of UK, EU and other confidentiality strategies. Whilst pre-registration confidentiality will no longer be complete, the mere existence of undisclosed filings on the register—as seen with EU filings—should not breach any commercial confidences so as to give rise to any material concern.
• Digital designs and design-enabling files
  • The government intends to amend both “design” and “product” definitions to explicitly accommodate animated and virtual designs. It also intends to extend registered-design rights to address the creating, downloading, sharing or distributing of media or software recording a design, with the extent of alignment with the EU approach still to be considered. There will also be a digital transformation project to enable different file formats to be used for filing applications.

Next Steps

Whilst the response suggests some significant changes are coming—including what design law will cover, who can obtain such rights and how long they can be enforced—it does not signal the fundamental overhaul of the legal regime that some had called for. The government has also embraced the strong sentiment from respondents that the speed, low-cost and simplicity of the current approach to designs in the UK needs to be maintained.

With respect to next steps, whilst the response sets out the path forward, progress will not necessarily be swift, as it will require legislative changes to give effect to the reforms. Whilst these may occur in 2027 or 2028, there are no guarantees, and the necessary legislative amendments could take effect as late as the end of this decade.

By: Simon Casinader and Sophie Verstraeten