Rajendra Kumar, RKR & Partners
The Government of India is in the process of considering certain reforms to the Indian legal framework and has recently made available a Concept Note for public consultation. The Concept Note proceeds on the premise that the design-copyright interface has remained a subject matter of conflicting interpretations leading to frequent litigation and low predictability for businesses. However, the Note does not cite any data or statistics received from the relevant stakeholders to support its premise.
It is submitted that the premise underlying the proposed amendment is fundamentally flawed and, if implemented, would have the effect of introducing an inequality in the scope of protection for the two variants of design right, one registered under the Designs Act and the other qualifying as an unregistered design right of the kind envisaged in the Concept Note.
