DESIGN
COPYRIGHT ACT. 1968
8/3);
1968.
Explanatory Memorandum
This Act came into operation in the UK on the 25th October,
It amends section 10 of the Copyright Act, 1956, and makes
an important change in the United Kingdom law on the protection available to industrial designs.
A design, in the form of a drawing, is initially protected "irrespective of its artistic merit" under the Copyright Act 1956. But because the copyright term of protection (the life of the author plus 50 years) was felt to be too long for mass produced articles of commerce, Section 10 of that Act provided that if and
when, with the permission of the owner of the copyright, the des- ign was mass reproduced on industrial articles and those articles
were marketed, the only protection available in the industrial field concerned was that given by the Registered Designs Act 1949. The effect of the Design Copyright Act 1968 is to postpone this loss of protection for 15 years. In future the protection will continue under the Copyright Act, without any formality such as registration, and whether or not the copyright owner also reg- isters his design under the Registered Designs Act.
But the pro- tection under the Copyright Act will cease 15 years after the copy- right owner first markets his mass produced goods.
The main advantage of the new Act is that protection under the Copyright Act automatically provides a measure of protection for designs, without any need to register, in countries which are mem- bers of the Berne Copyright Convention or the Universal Copyright Convention and who protect "works of applied art" under their copy- right laws. The works produced by nationals of Convention countries would, of course, have to be protected in any territory which accep- ted the extension of the Act so as to provide the reciprocal pro- tection needed under the Convention.