Guide to protecting your design in Australia

This resource outlines details on protecting your design in New Zealand, including how the design process works, how to stop others from using your registered design and lots more.

Guide  \  27 Sep 2017

If you design something new, you can stop others from copying your design in several ways. Patents, copyright, trade marks and registered designs all provide different types of protection for new designs. A registered design specifically protects a manufactured article with visually-apparent design features.

Registered designs are particularly important for three-dimensional articles because designs applied to three-dimensional articles generally lose copyright protection in Australia once they are used commercially.

This information sheet sets out details on protecting your design in Australia, including the range of products and visual features that designs can protect, the advantages of designs over relying on copyright, the importance of keeping your design a secret, how the design registration process works, how long a registered design lasts, and how to stop others from using your registered design.