 Industrial designs

 Scope , protection , filing, infringement

 Integrated circuits and layout design
 Semiconductors, unfair competition
 Designs Act 2000
 Industrial design refers only to the
ornamental or aesthetic aspects of a
product

 Industrial designs are applied to a wide

variety of products of industry or
handicraft:

2
 It may consist of three-dimensional
features such as the shape or surface of
the article, or

 two- dimensional features such as

patterns, lines or color.

3
 Bunny Bangle,

Daniel Brush, 1988-1992

 Industrial designs are
applied to a wide variety of
products of industry and
handicraft:

 from technical and medical

instruments to watches, Orchid Brooch,
Tiffany & Co,
jewelery, and other luxury New York, 1889

items;

FRANCK MULLER
 from house wares and
electrical appliances to
vehicles and architectural
structures;

 from textile designs to

leisure goods such as toys
and pet accessories.
4
 INDUSTRIAL DESIGN
COMIC CHARACTER - GRAPHIC DESIGN

5
6
 Industrial Design protection is provided
for a
 Shape,
 Configuration,
 Surface pattern,
 Colour, or line (or a combination of these),
 which, when applied to a functional
article, produces or increases aesthetics,
and improves the visual appearance of
the design, be it a two-dimensional or a
three-dimensional article.
 The pre-requisites for a design to qualify
for protection are as follows:
 It should be novel and original
 It should be applicable to a functional article
 It should be visible on a finished article
 It should be non-obvious
 There should be no prior publication or
disclosure of the design
 Just as trademarks distinguish your product or
service, industrial designs differentiate your
products from those of the competition. Both are
intellectual property tools that contribute to your
branding strategy and therefore need protection.

 Many businesses around the world invest large

sums of money, sometimes hundreds of thousands
of dollars in designing a new product or redesigning
the looks of an old product that is performing well
on the market and the appeal of the new design is
just what it takes to reposition the product on the
market and improve sales.

SNIST/BT/Ravindra/IPR-5 9
 Application form
 single or multiple application?
 monoclass or multiclass application?
 reproduction(s) of the designs
 name of the creator
 description
 payment of fees
 An ID must be registered to be protected under ID
law.

 Applicant fills in application provided by the

national IP office includes drawings or pictures of
the design.

 The IP office will undertake a formal examination to

ensure that the admin formalities are complied with
- others may conduct a substantive examination to
check existing designs on the register for novelty
and or originality

 Once design is registered it is entered in the design

register and published in the official design gazette
and a certificate is issued.
 Protection rights are provided for a
period of 10 years
 They can then be renewed once for an
additional period of 5 years.
 The outer appearance of a product makes it
visually more appealing and attractive. This
acts as a value-adding aspect, which in turn
increases the marketability of the product.

 This leads to the need to protect your

creation from third parties’ use, in order to
prevent them from taking advantage of
your rights in this world of competition. In
many cases, the design itself becomes the
identity of a brand.
 Contour of Coca Cola’s bottle
 Some of the most
famous examples are

shape of the Volkswagen Beetle

Shape of Mini Cooper Contours of the iPhone/iPad/ iPod

SNIST/BT/Ravindra/IPR-5 15
 Damages
 Injunction
 Statutory damages
 Not more than 50, 000/- per design
 Khadim Shoe Vs. Bata
 Bata sued Khadim for infringement of its
Hawai design

 However the registration of Bata was

cancelled because design was published
prior to its date of registration by Bata
 As per Indian Law, under the Design Act
of 2000, Industrial Design protection is a
type of intellectual property right that
gives the exclusive right to make, sell,
and use articles that embody the
protected design, to selected people
only.
 With the growing technology and
development and with the growing
competition to become a high-tech
country, a revolution in the field of
Information Technology arrived.

 With the advancement of this

information technology, a new branch in
the field of intellectual property
flourished, called as the Layout-Design
or the semiconductor integrated
circuits.
SNIST/BT/Ravindra/IPR-5 22
 A product having transistors or other

 Circuitry elements inseparably formed on

a semiconductor material or an

 Insulating material or

 inside the semiconductor material and

 Designed to perform an electronic circuitry

function.
SNIST/BT/Ravindra/IPR-5 23
 "Layout-design" means a layout of
transistors, and other circuitry elements
and includes lead wires connecting such
elements and expressed in any manner
in a semiconductor integrated circuit.

SNIST/BT/Ravindra/IPR-5 24
 The semiconductor integrated circuit is an integral
part of every computer chip.

 The fifth generation computers are using Very

Large Scale Integration (VLSI) where numerous
transistors are accommodated on a single chip,
cutting down the size of the chip and at the same
time increasing it’s processing power significantly.

 This ultimately translates into smaller and more

powerful computers.

 Hence, the development of the layout-design on a

semiconductor integrated circuit as an intellectual
property is quite significant
 "Commercial exploitation" in relation
to the SICLD means to sell, lease, offer
or exhibit for sale or otherwise distribute
such semiconductor integrated circuit
for any commercial purpose.

SNIST/BT/Ravindra/IPR-5 26
 Hence, a step was taken by various
organizations to pass regulations
regarding this issue.

 One such was the World Trade

Organization, and the result was the TRIPS
agreement addressing the intellectual
property related issues.

 India being a signatory of the WTO also

passed an Act in conformity with the TRIPS
agreement called the Semiconductor
Integrated Circuits Layout-Design
Act (SICLDA) passed in the year 2000
 The Semiconductor Integrated Circuits
Layout-design Act, 2000

 The Semiconductor Integrated Circuits

Layout-design rules,2001

SNIST/BT/Ravindra/IPR-5 28
 Product life cycles in many industries are
shortening.
 length of time and amount of investment
required, to obtain intellectual property
rights, especially patents, can be
disproportionate to the life of such product.
 Requirements such as the need to mark
products with "patent pending" also
become impracticable when products have
short life cycles and use many different
technologies subject to different patents,
especially when these products are
miniaturized.
 Integrated circuits comprises of numerous
building blocks, each block being patentable.
Since an integrated circuit contains hundreds or
thousands of semiconductor devices, a claim to
an integrated circuit would have to cover
hundreds or thousands of individual elements.

 Consequently, a patent claim that attempts to

describe an entire integrated circuit may be
hundreds of pages long. Clearly, such a narrow
claim would provide almost no protection.

 Even if one sought such narrow protection,

writing a patent application supporting a claim
with thousands of elements would be extremely
complex, cumbersome, and expensive.
 Obviously, integrated circuits are not
easily describable in a patent specification
or the claims. Also, it may take several
years to obtain an integrated circuit
patent from most patent offices
worldwide.

 This is unacceptable given that an

integrated circuit’s useful commercial life
may be less than one year.

 The cumbersome, time-consuming nature

of filing combined with extremely narrow
protection often makes patent law an
insufficient form of protection for
integrated circuits.
 Other forms of existing intellectual property
protection are also inapplicable to integrated
circuit layouts.

 Design patents protect the ornamental, but not

the functional, aspects of an article of
manufacture described in its drawings.

 Since integrated circuit layout is more

functional than ornamental, design patent
protection is generally inapplicable to
integrated circuits.

 Finally, trade secret law cannot be used to

protect most integrated circuits because an
integrated circuit layout may be reverse-
engineered.
 The layout of transistors on the semiconductor
integrated circuit or
 topography of transistors on the integrated
circuit determines the size of the integrated
circuit as well as its processing power.

 That is why the layout design of transistors

constitutes such an important and unique form
of intellectual property fundamentally different
from other forms of intellectual property like
copyrights, trademarks, patents and industrial
designs.

 Given that patent, copyright, and trade secret

law cannot adequately protect integrated
circuit design, hence an exclusive protection
for semiconductor integrated circuits layout-
design has became necessary to the
semiconductor industry.
What is protected?

A layout design expressed in any

manner, which is original, which has not
been commercially exploited for more
than 2 years from the date of
application for the registration, which is
inherently distinctive and capable of
being distinguishable from any other
registered layout design, is protected or
registered under the Act.
 The application for the protection of layout
design can be made by the person who claims
to be the creator of the layout design, his
legal representative, a person registered in
the prescribed manner as a layout design
agent or a person in the sole and regular
employment of the principal, in writing to the
registrar in the prescribed manner.

 The application can be filed either alone or

jointly. The application has to be filed within
the territorial limits that is a principal place of
business in India of the applicant.
 The registration of the layout design
shall be only for the period of 10 years
counted from the date of filing an
application for registration or from the
date of first commercial exploitation
anywhere in any country, whichever is
earlier.
 The act of reproducing, selling, importing
and distributing of integrated circuit layout
design for commercial purposes constitutes
infringement.

 Where such act is performed for the

purposes of scientific evaluation, analysis,
research or teaching shall not constitute
the act of infringement.

 Any person who commits infringement shall

be punishable with imprisonment for a
term, which may extend to 3 years, or with
fine which shall not be less than fifty
thousand rupees but which may extend to
ten lakh rupees, or with both.
 The SICLD Act fulfills India’s obligation under
the TRIPS agreement as approved by the
members of WTO.

 The intellectual property protection for

Integrated Circuit layout design is a key
factor throughout the world, and more so in
India because it does not have a strong
intellectual property protection policy in
software.

 As integrated circuit layout designs is in its

early years in India, it’s important that the
country boosts of a strong protection policy
right in the beginning itself and the SICLD Act
provides such a strong protection policy.
