My Lords, I found the Minister’s reply absolutely fascinating, although the intellectual logic of many parts of it escaped me. He gave a very helpful response to Amendment 23. It just shows that you can trawl through the Registered Designs Act and not find what you are looking for. However, I am impressed that the department found the relevant passages in there. I appreciate that an overlap exists except with regard to partnerships. It is very interesting that there is no reference to partnerships in the existing
legislation. Partnerships are interesting bodies. Some of them have unlimited liability whereas others are limited liability partnerships. Therefore, some interesting drafting needs to be done in that regard because LLPs are quite akin to corporate bodies.
Therefore, how does the legislation work? If I divined from what the Minister said that there is intent to come forward with an amendment on Report, I would be extremely happy with that response.