For several years now, the World Intellectual Property Office (WIPO) Standing Committee on Trade Marks, Industrial Designs and Geographical Indications has been discussing proposals for harmonisation of design filing procedures around the world -- like the Singapore Treaty for trade marks, but for designs.To assist in that process, WIPO is conducting a survey of users of design filing, which can be found here.
The survey can be completed in around 15 minutes, and will provide useful information for member states as they take forward their work to make design filing simpler and less expensive around the world. Readers are encouraged to complete the short survey by 11 May 2012.
Given the fact that 11 May is nearly upon us, Class 99 urges readers to drop whatever they're doing and complete it now!
Thanks for flagging this up. Certainly ACID had never heard of this survey. In theory ACID welcomes global harmnonisation of Design filing but keep it very, very SIMPLE and cost effective and if its adopted tell the world! This is WIPO's challenge! Having wasted 10 mins of the precious 15 trying to get WIPO to accept the turnover box in local currency I am afraid I gave up at the first hurdle! However, a 3 line whip has gone out to membership. The only downside there is that most of them (and the majority of the UK's 240,000 designers) rely on unregistered rights! This could be for several reasons, cost, aversion to form filling (I count myself in this bracket) or a simple case of "marketing" the benefits of having an official piece of paper which makes life a little easier if products are knocked off and the perpetrators respond to legal challenge responsibly. Though in a recent case study against a major high street retailer ,despite our ACID member having a registered design, the retailer made it quite clear that they were going to seriously challenge this (and, therefore cost the micro business an inordinate amount of money). They had stocked our member's product then ceased stocking it and substituted with their own look alike romping off with £1000's of sales having shipped it out to China to produce more cheaply. They subsequently tried to silence both the ACID member and ACID with a "shut up" clause and a £2K pay off! So, yes WIPO what a good idea to harmonise design filings but also put in place a strategy for cost and time global enforcement against those who seek the fast track to market through free-riding on the back of innovative and design-led companies.
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