ZAHID LA-LLP is one of the largest IP firms in Pakistan. The law firm has a wide range of expertise in designs to protect shape, configuration or composition of pattern or color, or combination of pattern and color in three-dimensional form containing aesthetic value. While obtaining registration of designs is essential, it is only one-step in developing a designs portfolio that offers the necessary safeguard, as well as augments marketability. ZAHID LA-LLP clientele benefit from persistent reviews of Designs use, competitor actions and market trends. The firm creates and manages portfolios of Pakistani and foreign designs for large corporations and large enterprises as well.

You find here information about design law(s) in Pakistan. Our skilled and technical team of professional experts best supports their clients as to understanding the design law in Pakistan. Increasing competitive environment and global trade have changed the way designs created and applied in commerce, trade and industry. Today, it is essential to have an intellectual property strategy that includes maximizing the potential value of a ones designs as well as reducing unnecessary costs and risks. Designs attorneys ZAHID LA-LLP provide the expertise required in order to obtain and protect IP rights. This involves managing the processes by which patents, trademarks’ rights are granted, and advising on the issues surrounding their validity and infringement.

What is an industrial design?

An industrial design right sometimes called “design right” or design patent, is a design consists of the creation of a shape, configuration or composition of pattern or color, or combination of pattern and color in three-dimensional form containing aesthetic value. Industrial Design constitutes the ornamental or aesthetic feature of object. A design may consist of three-dimensional pattern/features, such as the figure or exterior of an article, or of two-dimensional features, such as shapes, outlines, patterns, contours, lines or color. It protects the visual design of things that are not purely utilitarian.

An industrial design is primarily of an aesthetic or visual nature, and does not relate to the technical features of an article.

What kind of products can benefit from industrial design protection?

Industrial designs are applied to a wide range of goods of business and handicraft items: from packages and containers to furnishing and household goods, from lighting apparatus to costume jewelry, and from electrical devices to textiles. Industrial designs may also be relevant to graphic symbols, graphical user interfaces (GUI), and logos.

How are industrial designs protected?

In most systems, an industrial design necessities to be registered in order to be protected under industrial design law as a registered design. In some countries, industrial designs are protected under patent law as design patents. Industrial design laws in some countries grant without registration time and scope limited protection to so-called unregistered industrial designs.

Depending on the particular national law and the kind of design, industrial designs may also be protected as works of art under copyright law.

Which law applies?

Previously, the legislation regarding Patents and Designs governed under one law viz Patents & Designs Act, 1911. Now legal protection of designs in Pakistan is enshrined in the Registered Designs Ordinance, 2000. The rights granted under the Act are extended to the whole of Pakistan. To be protected under most national laws, an industrial design must be inventive or innovative or novel or/and original and non-functional. This means that an industrial design is primarily of an aesthetic nature, and any technical aspects of the article to which it is applied are not protected by the design registration. However, those features could be protected by a patent.

What kind of protection does an industrial design right offer?

In principle, the proprietor/originator of a registered industrial design has the right to inhibit third parties from selling, making, marketing or importing objects bearing or expressing a design, which is an imitation, copying, or substantially a copy, of the protected design, when such actions are undertaken for commercial purposes.

Advantages of registered designs

Industrial designs are what make an article attractive and appealing; hence, they add to the commercial value of a product and increase its marketability. The owner of the registered design is able to prevent unauthorized third parties to copy or replicate its design. As industrial designs add considerable commercial value to a product and facilitate its marketing & commercialization, registration warrants that a fair return on investment is obtained.

Protecting industrial designs helps to encourage economic development by inspiring creativity in the industrial and manufacturing sectors, as well as in traditional arts and crafts. Designs contribute to the expansion of commercial activity and the export of national products.

Furthermore, protection of industrial designs encourages fair competition and honest trade practices. It also broadens consumer choice, as registered designs lead to the production of more aesthetically attractive and diversified products. Industrial designs can be comparatively simple and inexpensive to develop and protect as paralleled to Patents. They are reasonably reachable to small and medium-sized enterprises as well as to individual artists and crafts makers, in both developed and developing countries

What’s more, registration of designs is a factor of economic development of a country, since it contributes to the expansion of commercial activities and enhances the export potential of national products.

Who may apply for registration?

In most countries, an industrial design required to be registered in order to be protected under industrial design law. As a rule, to be registrable, the design must be “novel” or “original”. Countries have varying definitions of such terms, as well as variations in the registration process itself. Normally, “new” means that no identical or very similar design is identified to have previously been existed. Once a design is registered, a registration certificate is issued. Under certain situations, an industrial design may also be protectable under unfair competition law, although the conditions of protection and the rights and remedies available can differ significantly

The following categories of persons being proprietor may apply for registration of design:

(i) where the author or creator of the design, for good consideration executes the work for some other person, the person for whom the design is so executed,

(ii) where a design or the right to apply a design to an article becomes vested, whether by assignment, transmission or operation of law, in any person other than the original proprietor, either alone or jointly with the original proprietor, in respect and to the extent in and to which the design or right has been so vested, that other person or, as the case may be, the original proprietor and that other person;

(iii)  if and to the extent to which two or more persons have created the same design independently of each other, the person whose application has the earliest filing date or, if priority is claimed, the earliest validity claimed priority date shall have the right to the registration of industrial design, as long as the said application is not withdrawn, .abandoned or rejected; and

(iv) in any other case, the author or creator of the design as may be assigned or as may be transferred by succession;

Except in the case of an application under Section 11 of the Ordinance, any proprietor or creator of any new or original design not previously published anywhere in the world may make an application for the registration of such design in Pakistan. A convention application may be filed in the convention country being signatory of WTO or any other country, which the Federal Government of Pakistan by notification declared a convention country.
When has a registered design been infringed?

There is infringement of a registered design if a person, without the consent of the proprietor or creator, has made, sold, import, market or worked articles bearing or embodying a copy or imitation of the registered design.

If any person infringes a registered proprietor’s right, the said proprietor may sue him for (i) the recovery of damages and (ii) for an injunction against the continuation of the infringement. In order to be granted a temporary injunction, the proprietor must show that he has a prima facie case, that his design is valid and that it has been infringed by the defendant.

What could prevent your design from being registered?

A design shall not be registered if it is the same as a design which, before the date of the application for registration, has been registered in Pakistan or published anywhere (except in convention application) in the world in respect of the same or any other article, or differs from such a design only in immaterial details or characteristics commonly used in the trade.

Is there a worldwide registered design?

Generally, industrial design protection is limited to the country in which protection is granted. The Hague Agreement Concerning the International Registration of Industrial Designs, a WIPO administered treaty, offers a procedure for international registration of designs. Applicants can file a single international application with either WIPO or the national or regional office of a country party to the treaty. The design then will be protected in as many member countries of the treaty as the applicant designates.

What is the procedure to register a design?

The application for the registration of a design must be filed at the Patent Office in the prescribed manner. If he thinks it is necessary, the Registrar will make some inquiries to verify the novelty and originality of the design. He may refuse or impose changes in the application as he thinks. An appeal shall lie to the High Court from any decision of the Registrar. An application which, owing to any default or neglect on the part the applicant, has not been completed within the prescribed time will be deemed to be abandoned. If the registration is allowed, the design will be registered as of the date on which the application was made, or such other date, whether earlier or later than that date, as the Registrar may in any particular manner direct.