Industrial Designs Act, 2001

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““Duration of copyright in relation to registered design.

31A.—The copyright in a design registered under the Industrial Designs Act, 2001, shall expire 25 years after the filing date of the application for registration of the design under that Act or on the date of expiration of the copyright under this Act, whichever is the sooner.”,

“Design documents and models.

78A.—(1) The copyright in a design document or model recording or embodying a design for anything other than an artistic work or a typeface is not infringed by the making of a product to the design or the copying of a product made to the design.

(2) The copyright in a design document or a model recording or embodying a design for anything other than an artistic work or a typeface is not infringed by the issue to the public, or the inclusion in a film, broadcast or cable programme service, of anything the making of which is, by virtue of subsection (1), not an infringement of that copyright.

(3) In this section and section 78B—

‘design’ means the design of any aspect of the shape or contours (whether internal or external) of the whole or part of a product, other than surface decoration;

‘design document’ means any record of a design, whether in the form of a drawing, a written description, a photograph, storing the work in any medium or otherwise;

‘product’ means any industrial or handicraft item, including parts intended to be assembled into a complex product, packaging, get-up, graphic symbols and typographical typefaces, but not including computer programmes; and

‘complex product’ means a product which is composed of multiple components which can be replaced permitting disassembly and reassembly of the product.

Effect of exploitation of design derived from artistic work.

78B.—(1) This section applies where an artistic work has been exploited, by or with the authorisation of the copyright owner, by—

(a) making by an industrial process products falling to be treated for the purposes of this Part as copies of the work, and

(b) marketing such products, in the State or elsewhere.

(2) After the expiry of 25 years from the end of the calendar year in which such products are first marketed, the work may be copied by making products of any description, or doing anything for the purpose of making products of any description, and anything may be done in relation to products so made, without infringing the copyright in the work.

(3) Where only part of an artistic work is exploited as mentioned in subsection (1), subsection (2) applies only in relation to that part.

(4) The Minister may prescribe:

(a) the circumstances in which a product, or any description of product, is to be regarded for the purposes of this section as made by an industrial process;

(b) the exclusion from the operation of this section such products of a primarily literary or artistic character as the Minister thinks fit.

(5) In this section references to products do not include films.”,