PRESS RELEASE: ACID criticises government decision not to criminalise copying of unregistered designs

The design rights campaign group says most British designers, including many jewellers, will be left without a meaningful deterrent against deliberate copying after the government decided not to extend criminal penalties to unregistered designs.

Anti Copying in Design (ACID) has strongly criticised the government’s decision not to create a criminal offence for intentionally copying unregistered designs. The decision follows the Intellectual Property Office’s consultation on changes to the UK designs framework, launched in 2025.

Since 2014, deliberately copying a registered design has been a criminal offence, a change ACID campaigned for. But most designers rely on unregistered design right, which protects a design automatically without the cost of registration. Copying an unregistered design can only be challenged through the civil courts, which ACID says is slow and expensive and beyond the means of most small businesses. This is especially relevant to jewellers, many of whom produce new designs too often to register them all.

ACID says that by keeping the two systems separate, the government has created a two-tier system that leaves a large part of the design sector without the same protection against deliberate copying. According to ACID, the UKIPO told a stakeholder meeting that the evidence submitted in favour of the change was “not robust enough and too anecdotal”.

Dids Macdonald OBE, ACID’s Chair and Co-founder, said: “Britain’s designers have been failed by Government. After campaigning, we finally secured criminal provisions for the intentional infringement of registered designs, yet the Government has stopped short of extending that protection to unregistered designs. Given that the majority of Britain’s designers rely on unregistered design rights, this is a travesty.”

She knows the cost of copying at first hand. Thirty years ago, in 1996, a range of products she designed was copied by a major retailer. The legal action that followed took two years, cost a fortune and nearly destroyed her business, before ending in a settlement without admission of liability.

“Why should a designer have to spend years and a fortune pursuing a civil case, while those who copy, manufacture and profit from their work can walk away with the commercial rewards?” she asked.

ACID’s Chief Counsel, Nick Kounoupias, pointed to the gap between design protection and copyright. An author, songwriter or artist is protected by copyright for their lifetime plus 70 years, and can turn to the criminal courts if their work is deliberately copied. Unregistered design right, by contrast, lasts for a maximum of 15 years, and ACID is concerned that this could be shortened further as the government simplifies the law.

“The IPO acknowledges in its report that the rampant copying of designs causes considerable stress to designers as well as depriving them of their livelihood and forcing them into very expensive litigation,” he said. “Given this recognition by government, it is frankly astonishing that no meaningful reforms have been suggested to ameliorate matters.”

ACID says it will continue to campaign for effective, proportionate and accessible protection for all designers, whether their designs are registered or not.

Find out more: acid.uk.com