Scotland's Year Of Innovation, Architecture And Design – Protecting Innovation In 2016

This article was first published in The Scotsman and is available at www.scotsman.com/news/david-murray-protecting-ideas-a-patently-good-idea-1-4030297.

2016 has been designated as Scotland's Year of Innovation, Architecture and Design and is aimed at showcasing and celebrating the country's innovative individuals and companies with a number of events over the course of this year. These events across Scotland will honour the many inventions and designs that originated here and went on to change the world.

In my experience, Scotland remains one of the most innovative countries in the world, with its world-leading healthcare and electronics industries, not to mention the innovative companies in the energy supply chain. It is right to recognise this characteristic of our history, present and future. To ensure innovation retains its place in our economy, however, it is important to safeguard it and make sure that innovative companies reap the rewards from their ingenuity, creativity and hard work. To do this, they need to successfully identify and capture the innovation they generate, then go onto protect it.

Both here and in many countries around the world, legal protection for innovation can be sought using intellectual property (IP) rights, including patents, registered designs and trade marks, amongst a range of other rights.

As the name suggests, registered designs provide protection for the appearance of new designs with individual character. Registered designs are a relatively quick and cost-effective way to capture non-functional product designs, design developments as well as novel two dimensional and three dimensional designs in all areas of technology, including those as diverse as construction products, tools and equipment, company logos and packaging and consumer products. Indeed, in some cases - and provided a number of conditions are met - the registered design application process can be accelerated using a fast track process. We have used this process with some clients to progress applications from filing to registration in less than one week. Even where the conditions for fast tracking an application are not met, it is often possible to obtain registered design protection in around four to six weeks from filing an application.

In Europe, applications for registered design protection are administered by the Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market (OHIM) which from March this year will be known as the European Union...