The Indian Intellectual Property Office invited comments today for the recently published draft amendment rules (“draft rules”) for Design filings in India. The draft rules can be found here.

What’s new?

Taking a leaf out of the Patent Office’s book, the draft rules propose separate fee for natural persons and legal entities (even if they jointly apply with natural persons) filing or opposing design applications. There is no such distinction under the existing Designs Rules, 2001 (the “existing Rules”).

The fee under the existing Rules is proposed to be applied to the natural persons and the legal entities may have to pay four times the existing fee.

My take

In my opinion though, the increase in fee for legal entities is not too steep although I have other grievances like lack of e-filing system for designs, lack of concession in fee for Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (“MSMEs”) especially since this is where some beautifully original designs originate, etc.

Voice your opinion

The closing date for receiving comments is 30 days’ time from today i.e., until April 3, 2014. If you are interested, you can communicate your suggestions or observations regarding the draft rules to the following address:

Secretary to the Government of India,
Ministry of Commerce and Industry (Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion),
Udyog Bhavan,
New Delhi- 11OO11

Alternately you can email your comments to chandni.raina@nic.in.

Enjoy it while it lasts

While we cannot be sure of when these draft rules will come into effect, persons (legal and natural) planning to apply for copyright in design might want to take advantage of the existing fee while they can.

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