Industrial Designs

What Industrial Design Is

A school of Design defines industrial design as a professional service wherein the function and appearance of a product is optimized by either creating or developing already existing concepts for the mutual benefits of the company and the end users. In this sense, industrial design is the act of improving on the make-up of artifacts and the creation of new artifacts.

Basically, industrial designers engineer concepts. They study both the function and the form of an existing artifact and transform it to a state that is more preferred. The created knowledge sometimes becomes a company’s core intellectual property. It can thus spell the company’s triumph in the market or its downfall if it is not managed well.

Commercial Advantages Of Protecting Industrial Designs

Like other created knowledge and subject-matter, industrial designs need protection. Industrial designers as well as companies put a lot of effort and money into the design process—an event of counterfeiting may put all of these to waste.

Not all industrial designs may be used to produce an actual product. But they still need to be well preserved in the folds of the company to avoid competitors from using it for their economic advantage.

Protection Of Industrial Designs

Industrial design rights are intellectual property rights that grant total ownership of an object’s visual design to its creator. Industrial design rights consider the two-dimensional or three-dimensional patterns in depicting a product, as well as its shape, configurations and colors among many other design components.

International And Domestic Laws on Protecting Industrial Designs

The Hague Agreement Concerning the International Registration of Industrial Designs or the Hague System—an agency administered by the WIPO—facilitates the registration of industrial designs in several countries.

In Singapore, the Registered Designs Act (Cap 266, 2005 Rev Ed), patterned from the UK Registered Designs Act 1949 (and amended in 1988), underlines the protection for the country’s industrial designs. Companies can register their industrial designs domestically or internationally.

Domestic registration can be done in the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore while international registration can be applied in accordance with the Geneva Act of the Hague Agreement Concerning the International Registration of Industrial Designs.