About Designs Law

The Advisory Council on Intellectual Property (ACIP) was recently tasked with conducting a review of the workability of the Australian registered designs system under the Designs Act 2003 (Cth) (Designs Act) and determining what improvements are required. Arts Law has been active in responding to the ACIP inquiry, focusing on the need to improve the confusing and outdated copyright/design overlap provisions in the Copyright Act 1968 (Cth) and the Designs Act which, among other things, allow for copyright protection to be lost if an artistic work is reproduced on an industrial scale. Arts Law believes the overlap provisions result in artists being unable to fully exploit their work without running the risk of having their work freely copied and reproduced by others.