The Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill currently going through Parliament looks at modernising and improving current legislation around copyright protection for designs.
If you read yesterday’s Daily Mail, you will have been misinformed about the plans. Changes to the law around copyright protection will not affect the furniture industry as suggested. So what are we doing?
Some of the furniture industry believes that back-dating the requirement would leave business owners sitting with thousands of pounds of un-sellable stock, as items of furniture which have been available for decades suddenly become illegal overnight. Some people have also said that furniture makers who spent money on expensive tools to replicate specific designs will see their investments wasted.
However, items will not become “illegal overnight” since the changes will not apply to existing stock in the country, only to newly manufactured, or newly imported, items of furniture. And the changes to copyright protection would not apply to all furniture, only to those furniture items which were sufficiently artistic to attract copyright protection. Transition provisions should provide sufficient opportunity for the industry to adapt.
You can read about the changes, what is being proposed, and more in this factsheet. Our next Blog post will look at the proposals for extended collective licensing as part of the Bill.
