What is the difference between a design, a patent and a trademark?

A design protects how a product looks, a patent protects how it works, and a trademark protects the name or sign that identifies it. A product with a new shape, a new mechanism and a brand needs all three, and they have different deadlines.

Does a design registration cover the whole product?

It covers what the statement of novelty claims, as shown in the representations. Claiming precisely is what makes the right defensible.

How much does design registration cost?

The official fee is charged per application, with a lower fee for individuals, startups and small entities. A product that needs several distinct designs protected may need several applications, so what counts as one design is a cost question as well as a legal one.

What can I do if my registered design is copied?

Copying a registered design is piracy under Section 22 of the Designs Act. The owner can sue for an injunction and damages, and the defendant will often answer by seeking cancellation of the registration, which is why a carefully drafted application matters long after it is granted.

IP & Business

Design Lawyer in India

Q: How long does a registered design last?

Ten years from the date of registration, extendable by a further five years on an application made before the first term expires. Fifteen years is the maximum.

Pencil sketches of a chair and a lamp beside a ribbed ceramic vase, a white lamp prototype and a folder tied with red ribbon

A registered design protects how a product looks: its shape, configuration, pattern and ornament. Soni And Soni registers industrial designs under the Designs Act, 2000, defends and challenges registrations in cancellation proceedings, and acts when a design is copied.

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The ground

What you are actually dealing with

What a design right covers

A registered design protects appearance only: the features of shape, configuration, pattern, ornament or composition of lines and colours applied to an article and judged solely by the eye. It does not protect how the article works: that is a patent, and it does not protect the name on it, which is a trademark. Anything dictated purely by function falls outside the right.

Novelty is destroyed by your own disclosure

A design must be new or original and must not have been disclosed to the public anywhere before the filing date, and that includes disclosure by the applicant. Showing the product at a trade fair, putting it on a website or listing it for sale before filing is usually enough to destroy the novelty of your own design. The narrow exception is an exhibition notified by the government, followed by an application within six months. Filing comes before launch, not after it.

How long it lasts

Registration gives ten years of exclusive right from the date of registration, extendable by a further five years on an application made before the first term expires. Fifteen years is the ceiling. Extension is not automatic, and a right allowed to lapse is hard to get back.

Why copyright is not enough for a product

Copyright in a drawing does not protect a design that could have been registered but was not: once the design has been applied to more than fifty articles by an industrial process, copyright in it ends under Section 15(2) of the Copyright Act, 1957. For anything made in quantity, registration under the Designs Act is the protection that lasts.

Our part

How we handle design matters

Design applications look simple and fail on detail: on the representations, on the statement of novelty, and on classification. Those are the three things we spend the time on, and the same care decides whether a registration holds up when it is challenged.

01
Representations prepared so they show the design, and only the design, from every view the Office requires.
02
Statements of novelty drafted to claim what is genuinely new rather than the whole article by default.
03
Cancellation petitions defended, and brought where a competitor's registration should not stand.
04
Design, trademark and patent protection considered together, since most products need more than one.

Scope

What this engagement covers

Design searches and registrability advice
Filing with the Designs Office at the Patent Office, Kolkata
Representations, statements of novelty and Locarno classification
Objections, hearings and prosecution to registration
Cancellation proceedings, attack and defence
Infringement action and extension of the term

How it runs

The process, stage by stage

No stage carries a promised date. The Registry's queue and the court's list are not ours to commit on your behalf. What we commit to is doing our part of each stage without delay.

01
Search and advise
A search of registered designs and the market, and a view on whether the design is new and where it is best claimed.
02
Prepare
Representations and the statement of novelty are prepared, and the article classified under the Locarno classification.
03
File
The application is filed online with the Designs Office of the Patent Office, Kolkata.
04
Prosecute
Objections are answered and a hearing attended where required, through to registration.
05
Maintain and enforce
The first term is diarised for extension, and infringement pursued where the design is copied.

Common questions

Questions we are asked most often

Usually not. Publication anywhere before the filing date defeats novelty, and your own launch, trade-fair display or online listing counts. The only exception is display at an exhibition notified by the government, with the application filed within six months. File before disclosure.

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