CONCEPT OF INDUSTRIAL DESIGN :
Industrial designs belong to the aesthetic field, but are at the same time intended to serve as pattern for the manufacture of products of industry or handicraft. An industrial design is the ornamental or aesthetic aspect of a useful article, which must appeal to the sense of sight and may consist of the shape and/or pattern and/or colour of article. An industrial design to be protectable, must be new and original. Industrial designs are protected against unauthorised copying or imitation, for a period which usually lasts for five, ten or 15 years.
Textile designs were the first to receive legal protection. As early as in 1787 the first Act for design protection was enacted in Great Britain for the encouragement of the arts of design. This was an experimental measure extending protection for a limited duration. Shortly thereafter its life was extended and it was made perpetual. In 1839 the protection under the Act was enlarged to cover “Designs for Printing other woven Fabrics”.
In the same year another Act was passed for design protection for articles of manufacture generally: An Act to secure to Proprietors of Designs for Articles of Manufacture the Copyright of such Designs for a limited period of time. The legislative process for design protection took rapid strides thereafter. A consolidating and updating measure was enacted in 1842. An Act to consolidate and amend the laws relating to the Copyright of Designs for ornamenting Articles of manufacture-repealed all the earlier statutes referred to above.
It is significant to note that when the designs law was codified in 1842 and took its modern day shape, copyright protection had not yet been extended to drawings, paintings and photographs. This came only twenty years later with the enactment of the Fine Arts Copyright Act, 1862. Codification of copyright law was nowhere in sight and came only seventy years later with the enactment of the Imperial Copyright Act, 1911. Until 1883, the statutes relating to patents, designs and trade marks remained separate. They were combined in a single enactment by the Patents, Designs, and Trade Marks Act, 1883, which repealed all the then existing statutes in the three areas. Soon trade marks law parted company and was separately enacted as the Trade Marks Act, 1905, leaving patents and designs to remain together. The Patents and Designs Act, 1907 consolidated the enactments relating to patents and designs.
The first designs legislation enacted in India for the protection of Industrial Designs was the Patents and Designs Protection Act, 1872. It was enacted to supplement the Act of 1859 passed by the Governor General of India for granting exclusive privileges to inventors and added protection for Industrial Design. The Act of 1872 was passed to extend similar privileges to the inventors of “any new and original pattern and design” in British India, though for a very shorter duration. It included in the term “new manufacture” any new and original pattern or design, or the application of such pattern or design to any substance or article of manufacture”. The Act, however, left undefined the expression new pattern or design.
The Inventions and Designs Act, 1898, which consolidated and amended the law relating to the protection of inventions and designs contained provisions relating to designs in a separate part. The (British) Patents and Designs Act, 1907, became the basis of the Indian Patents and Designs Act, 1911. The provision relating to patents under the Indian Patents and Designs Act, 1911, were repealed by the Patents Act, 1970 − a post- Independence updation and consolidation of the patent law. The design provisions of the Indian Patents and Designs Act, 1911 continued, with some consequential amendments, with the title as the Designs Act, 1911. The new Designs Act, 2000 has been passed by the Parliament to make the Design Law in India TRIPS compliant.