New IP legislation 'could clog up courts'

The bill - designed to simplify and improve design and patent protection, particularly for SMEs - would make it a criminal offence, punishable with up to 10 years in prison, to deliberately copy a registered design. It passed through the House of Lords on Tuesday July 30, 2013 with an amendment to improve defences available to those prosecuted after the bill has passed into law.

The proposed amendment includes a clause allowing those accused of infringement to defend their themselves on the grounds that they ‘reasonably believed’ that they had not done so.

Patent attorneys Withers & Rogers said this will extend protection to defendants who believe that their own design is sufficiently different to escape infringement.

The draft legislation is expected to be debated in the House of Commons later this year before passing into law in 2014/2015.

Tony Whitehead, IET policy director and Roger Burt, president of the Chartered Institute of Patent Attorneys agree that current legislation adequately protects against infringements and caution that that the wording of the bill has the potential to create numerous infringement claims.