My Lords, this is more in the nature of a helpful suggestion than a probing amendment, although I would be grateful for comments from the Minister when he responds.
In their response to their consultation process, the Government rejected an earlier proposal to amend the Registered Designs Act 1949 to incorporate joint
ownership provisions similar to those provided for unregistered design rights in the CDPA. However, they highlighted a related issue about how joint ownership should be treated and enforced and said that they would give greater consideration to the idea of introducing provisions similar to those that exist for patents, which would allow one party to exploit the design independently of the other. However, the Bill does not contain this provision, even though the consultation document states that the Government see merit in the proposal and that they intend to explore the option further. Will the noble Viscount explain what is happening? Is exploration continuing? If so, where have the intrepid explorers reached? May we have a status report on progress? To save a lot of time and fruitless further exploration, our amendment, which is loosely based on Section 36 of the Patents Act 1977, would, if accepted, introduce these provisions. We would like to debate whether the Government are now in a position to consider moving on this.
At present, the joint owners of a patent can each work the invention separately from the others, whereas joint owners of copyright cannot. There is no clarity as regards UK registered designs on this point. For unregistered design rights, Section 259 of CDPA deals with joint designs and states:
“In this Part a ‘joint design’ means a design produced by the collaboration of two or more designers in which the contribution of each is not distinct from that of the other or others … References in this Part to the designer of a design shall, except as otherwise provided, be construed in relation to a joint design as references to all designers of the design”.
This would be helpful, although I think that in practice it means that the permission of all design rights owners are needed before one can exploit a design, which might be somewhat unsatisfactory and may need further consideration. Again, I would be grateful for the Minister’s response on that point. With that, I beg to move.