Guest article from Ollie Downey at the Intellectual Property Office
In the competitive world of toys and games, your designs are valuable commercial assets. Whether you’re a multinational brand or a small designer developing the next playground craze, understanding design protection can help you build stronger businesses and make more informed decisions about protecting your creations.
What is Design Protection?
Design protection gives you legal rights over the visual appearance of your products. In the toy industry, this protects designs such as action figures or soft toys, board games and their components, or the styling of electronic toys such as video game controllers – essentially the visual features that make your products recognisable and appealing to customers.
Your Protection Options
The UK offers several types of design protection to suit different business needs:
Registered Designs
These provide protection for the appearance of your designs. Applications cost £50 for one design or £70 for up to 10 designs, offering up to 25 years of protection. Registered designs cover both 2D and 3D visual elements including shapes, configurations, colours, textures, and surface decoration.
Unregistered Design Protection
The UK provides two types of automatic protection:
It should be noted that designers who choose to rely on unregistered nights may need evidence of when they created their designs.
Copyright Protection
Copyright can protect toys that qualify as “works of artistic craftsmanship” – typically unique, handcrafted items showing exceptional creativity and skill. This might include limited-edition collectibles or intricate hand-carved pieces.
Copyright provides very long protection (creator’s lifetime plus 70 years) and may offer protection alongside design, or other rights.
Toys need to demonstrate both originality and artistic craftsmanship to benefit from copyright protection, making this most relevant for genuinely artistic, handmade pieces rather than mass-produced items.
How These Rights Work Together
Many toys can benefit from multiple types of protection simultaneously. For example, an innovative building toy might have registered and unregistered design protection for its appearance, automatic unregistered design right protection for its configuration, and potentially copyright protection for any artistic elements. Technical aspects of your products e.g. how they work may also be protected by a patent. Any branding on your products or on its packaging may be able to be protected as a trade mark.
Different IP rights cover different aspects of a product or brand and last for different periods, giving you comprehensive coverage that matches how you actually develop and market your products.
Making Protection Work for Your Business
BTHA members may find that focusing registered protection on their most commercially important designs, while relying on automatic protection for other products, creates an effective and manageable approach.
Getting Practical Support
The Intellectual Property Office provides educational resources designed for businesses of all sizes. When you need professional advice, many IP attorneys offer fixed-fee services for straightforward applications, making costs predictable.
You can find more information on how design applications are examined by the IPO here.
Coming soon! Have Your Say on the Future of Design Protection
The Intellectual Property Office is launching a major consultation on proposed changes to the UK designs system in the coming weeks. This represents a significant opportunity for designers and companies like yourselves to influence how the system could work better.
The consultation will cover several areas that directly impact toymakers and manufacturers, including simplifying the complex patchwork of current design rights, improving protection for digital designs, and addressing anti-competitive design registrations that can harm legitimate businesses.
Keep an eye out for the consultation launch – we’ll include a reminder in the BTHA’s newsletter when it goes live. We really need to hear from independent designers and companies about how the current system works for you and what changes would make the biggest difference to your business. Your voice matters in shaping a system that truly supports creative professionals.
Sign up to this newsletter to receive a direct email to your inbox when the consultation launches.
Ollie Downey is Senior External Affairs Manager at the Intellectual Property Office. For more information about design protection, click here.Â
