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As intellectual property solicitors, we are concerned about the steady erosion of intellectual property, the threat posed by artificial intelligence, and their billionaire owners.
However, do these numpties have a point about UK-registered designs? I’m beginning to believe they do!
However, from the bottom up, the UKIPO and other authorities are failing everyone by failing to safeguard and permitting the abuse of the UK’s Registered Design system.
Based on our own experience, we say this because there has been a discernible increase in so-called rights holders claiming that a competitor is infringing on their registered design and demanding that Amazon remove it right away or face repercussions. After Amazon complies, the Registered Design owner is usually free to carry on selling.
Given the ridiculousness of the system, I think you could register a banana with the UKIPO and order everyone selling bananas on Amazon to stop, even though a registered design holder should normally be able to protect their design.
UKIPO’s Rubber-Stamped Designs: The Need for Immediate Reform to Prevent Bullying in the Marketplace
An Index of “Laughable” Designs
Credibility issues are plaguing the Registered Designs regime of the UK Intellectual Property Office. With hardly any examination, a deluge of design applications—many of which are downright ridiculous in terms of originality or novelty—are making their way to registration. Currently, before granting rights, the UKIPO does not thoroughly review design filings for uniqueness or distinctiveness. Applications are merely given a quick formality check instead, which essentially rubber-stamps anything that reaches the examiner’s desk. What was the outcome? A public register filled with designs that, if properly considered on their merits, no serious court would have upheld. There is a noticeable discrepancy between the law and practice. A design is only protected under Section 1B of the Registered Designs Act 1949 if it is “new” and has “individual character.” To put it simply, a design that is already well-known to the world should not be monopolised. However, that is precisely what is taking place: without any inquiry, unoriginal, copycat, or insignificant designs are being given official status as UK registered designs.
If the penalties for such unworthy registrations weren’t so severe, they would be hilarious. The system has become a playground for bad actors as a result of the UKIPO’s inability to weed out non-novel designs during the application stage. An “alarming surge in anti-competitive bad-faith design registrations, particularly by rival shops,” has been noted in recent years. Online marketplaces’ willingness to accept takedown requests and “the lack of novelty examination of registered design applications” are directly responsible for this, fostering an environment that is “ripe for abuse.” To put it another way, the UKIPO’s rubber-stamp policy isn’t merely a peculiarity of the bureaucracy; rather, it’s facilitating a wave of market abuse. Almost anything, no matter how old or common, can be registered by competitors, who can then use that registration as a weapon against other people. When the UK’s design register has entries that are so devoid of true novelty that one could be forgiven for giggling—until you see how those entries are being used to disparage respectable companies—its integrity is called into question.
Whether the UKIPO reviews design applications is a seemingly insignificant procedural matter, but it has serious and detrimental consequences for small businesses. Low-quality UK-registered designs can be used as a weapon by dishonest parties to stifle competition on online marketplaces. Amazon is the best place to see this. In reality, websites like Amazon treat a UK design registration—no matter how fictitious—as a legitimate intellectual property right that needs to be upheld. As a result, genuine sellers are receiving removals and takedown notices for designs that shouldn’t have been registered in the first place.
Take a look at a typical situation: A rival filed a complaint alleging the product violates a UK registered design, and a small UK seller finds their Amazon listing suddenly deleted. The seller instantly recognises the cited design when looking it up; it’s basically the same generic product that has been available for years. A seller of basic drinking straws was recently served with a removal notice due to a purported design violation. The bendable drinking straw for which the registered design was intended has been on the market for many years. The fact that such a commonplace item could even be listed as “new” astounded the Amazon seller, which was understandable. However, Amazon deactivated the listing in accordance with its policy. The seller had to prove a negative—that the design was invalid—in order to have their product relisted, which completely upended their business overnight.
This incident is not unique. The use of questionable design rights to bully others in the marketplace has grown in popularity. The immediate impact on small businesses is devastating. Listings get removed, sales revenue plummets, and hard-won visibility in the marketplace is lost.
At Lawdit average fees for pre action ie writing to the opponent and to Amazon will easily be £2000+VAT. If we have to take steps to invalidate the design fees would be £5,000+VAT with very little chance of the client recovering even if the design is invalidated. To put it succinctly, a fraudulently registered design can be used as a sledgehammer to destroy a rival’s online presence. The burdensome task of battling a legal battle to demonstrate that the design should never have been registered at all falls on the victim.
The seriousness is demonstrated by actual cases. In one instance that our firm handled, complaints of design infringement resulted in the repeated removal of a client’s Amazon listings for a particular kind of party straw. The product was just a colourful, bendy straw that was readily available from numerous suppliers; it was nothing special. However, a competitor was using this straw to file complaint after complaint after obtaining a UK-registered design for it. Due to this registration, our client’s listings were repeatedly removed (on multiple occasions in 2024), resulting in large financial losses and disruptions to their business. Every takedown resulted in unsold inventory, lost sales, and reputational harm to the seller. This type of misuse—bullying a rival offline with a cheaply purchased registration—is precisely what the system’s design should stop, not facilitate. It was “inconceivable that [such] a product is a lawful Registered Design right,” according to the correspondence in that case, and the owner of the design had “clearly abused [their] monopoly.” Unfortunately, under the UKIPO’s current lax regime, that monopoly is presumed valid until proven otherwise, leaving victims effectively guilty until proven innocent.
Case Study: The Bendy Straw Fiasco
To illustrate just how broken the system is, look no further than the bendy straw saga referenced above. It serves as a case study in UKIPO’s failure to police the register. In that case, a design was registered in mid-2023 for a “bendable drinking straw.” On its face, this should have raised every possible red flag at the Designs Registry – after all, bendable straws have been a staple of daily life for generations. In fact, the fundamental concept was invented in the 1930s by Joseph Friedman, who famously created the first flexible straw to help his daughter drink more easily. Friedman went on to patent the idea in 1937 (U.S. Patent No. 2,094,268) and commercialise it. For nearly a century since, bendy straws have been produced and sold worldwide. In essence, by 2023, the design of a bendable straw was not remotely novel – it was public domain knowledge.
However, in 2023, the UKIPO granted a private individual a UK-registered design for a bendy straw despite all of this. No examiner compared the application to any previously published works or products. Friedman’s straw from the 1930s and innumerable other examples would have been discovered with even a cursory Google search or a look through the patent archives. Indeed, the evidence practically jumped out of history books and internet catalogues when our firm prepared an invalidity action against this straw design. We referenced decades of widespread use and the 1937 patent. Long before the filing date, we cited YouTube videos (one older than eight years) showing the same flexible straws.We also discovered that, for essentially the same straw, another UK registered design (No. 6242368) had been submitted and approved in late 2022. In other words, it was evident that there was a lack of novelty because a nearly identical design was already registered in the UK before the bendy straw in question was ever submitted.
Equipped with this vast amount of prior art, our client submitted an application to have the 2023 straw design declared invalid. The registered design violated Section 1B of the Act, as the statement of case in that DF19A invalidity application explained: the design was not new, and any knowledgeable person could see that it lacked unique character over the pre-existing straw. There was no denying the proof of long-term use. To be honest, the fact that such a registration had been issued at all was embarrassing. As we contended, the contested design failed the fundamental statutory requirements because it was identical to products that had been on the market for decades. Remarkably, Design No. 6242368, submitted in 2022, for “Green Straws,” a collection of pictures that resembled the 2023 design almost exactly, was also approved by the UKIPO. Any assertion that the later design was original or novel was disproved by this earlier registration.
If the first design existed, one might ask how the second could be registered. The unsettling response is that the UKIPO probably didn’t check. The burden of identifying the conflict and contesting it after the fact fell on someone because there is no substantive examination. Meanwhile, the 2023 registrant used their straw design as a weapon, filing complaints that resulted in a competitor being removed from Amazon twice in late 2024. The design’s lack of novelty was only formally acknowledged after the invalidity process was initiated, citing everything from a 1930s invention to contemporary YouTube videos. Despite how ridiculous it may sound, this story is a perfect microcosm: a generic product was able to become a registered right due to the UKIPO’s “file now, check never” strategy, which was then used to harass a small business until a costly legal battle corrected the situation.
Law vs. Practice: Section 1B and the Examination Void
What is eligible for protection is clearly defined by the Registered Designs Act 1949, as amended.n 1B(1) says a design is protected by registration only if it is “new” and has “individual character.” The Act also clarifies that “new” refers to the fact that no design that is identical or significantly different has been made public prior to the relevant date. “Individual character” means that, in contrast to previous designs, the design must leave a distinct overall impression on a knowledgeable user. All things considered, the law aims to save registered status for true design innovations rather than small adjustments to well-known products or recycled concepts. A design is considered invalid if it fails to pass those tests, and it may be declared so if it is contested.
The glaring issue in the UK is that the honour system is solely responsible for fulfilling these legal requirements. To confirm that a design is truly unique and novel, the UKIPO doesn’t perform a substantive review or novelty search. If all the necessary documentation is in order and the fee is paid, a design application can proceed straight to registration. No examiner is actively contrasting the submission with previously published works or designs. In contrast, take into account other jurisdictions. For instance, in the US, a design patent, which is roughly equivalent to a registered design in the UK, requires a substantive review by the USPTO for novelty and non-obviousness. Similar to this, Japan reviews design applications for uniqueness prior to awarding them. By their very nature, those systems eliminate the worst instances of well-known or unimportant designs. However, the UKIPO provides a system that is open to abuse and has few safeguards.
The UK wasn’t always like this. The UK Designs Registry used to conduct some examination in the past, but this was discontinued in 2006 to conform to EU standards. In order to expedite registrations and align with the EU’s methodology (the EUIPO also registers designs without prior examination), this was the rationale at the time. There was a greater chance of invalid designs on the register as speed and simplicity increased. Almost twenty years later, the results are in: a quick but inefficient system that saves time up front but leads to arguments and legal action later. The public and the courts are left to determine validity, even though the minimal examination may save office work during the filing stage. Companies like the aforementioned Amazon sellers are forced to defend against infringement claims or participate in expensive invalidity proceedings in order to remove fraudulent registrations after the fact. This is an unfair and ineffective use of resources. In essence, the UKIPO has transferred its duty to guarantee validity to the people who can least afford it: small businesses that are embroiled in costly legal battles to clear their names.
This tension seems to be acknowledged even by the UKIPO itself. Stakeholders were questioned in a 2022 call for opinions and a recent 2025 survey on designs about the effectiveness of the current system of not examining designs and whether a change is necessary.
According to reports, many respondents appreciate how easy it is to register, but they also point out the drawbacks of validity. A two-tier system (where registration is quick but a novelty search is necessary before a design can be enforced) or using AI tools to swiftly identify prior art are two ideas that have been put forth. These conversations demonstrate that people are aware of the problems with the status quo. To put it simply, speed and substance need to be balanced. Presently, speed is prioritised over the register’s integrity, creating an imbalance. The UKIPO’s Registered Designs Examination Practice guide may specify the requirements that an application must fulfil, but it says nothing about evaluating the Section 1B requirements up front. This is because, according to policy, the design is not checked until it is challenged after it has been granted. Instead of being primary gatekeeping criteria, novelty and individual character are often handled as post-registration afterthoughts.
Reform or Withdraw: The UKIPO’s Final Choice
The UKIPO must now confront a harsh reality. It should not grant design monopolies at all if it is unable to guarantee that only genuinely unique and innovative designs are registered. In a system that is ostensibly founded on merit and innovation, the current strategy—register everything and let the parties work it out later—is not acceptable. It actively encourages market abuse and erodes trust in UK intellectual property rights. The UKIPO needs to either completely overhaul its examination procedure or think about ceasing to operate as a state-run agency for design registration.
The first choice is obvious: devote enough funds to a thorough analysis of design applications. This entails bringing back substantive review for originality and personality. Before they are added to the register, examiners would have to conduct searches (possibly with the help of image-recognition software and databases of previous designs) to find glaring duplicates or minor variations. Yes, this requires time, money, and training, but it’s necessary to keep a legitimate register of rights. Design rights are strong monopolies that can last up to 25 years; they shouldn’t be given away like candy. One could argue that the total expenses imposed on companies that must later combat fraudulent registrations are far higher than the cost of examination. A thorough review would eliminate the “laughable” applications—the flimsy, imitation designs that should never be used. The bad actors who currently take advantage of the IPO’s laxity would be discouraged as a result. As suggested by stakeholders, the UKIPO may take into account hybrid approaches if it is concerned about backlogs or speed. For instance, it may limit the immediate enforceability of a design until it passes a vetting process or require a novelty search within a year after a quick provisional registration. Compared to the current situation, even small steps towards substantive scrutiny would be beneficial.
The second option is extreme, but it should be considered: if the UKIPO is unable to stop misuse, it should cease providing a registered design system that gives essentially unsubstantiated claims a false sense of legitimacy. To put it another way, it is preferable to have no registration system than one that can be easily twisted into a weapon for bullying that is anti-competitive. The UK could leave registration to other countries or an international system and rely on unregistered design rights, which at least only result from actual use. Naturally, this is a last resort. However, keep in mind that a government agency shouldn’t operate a service that does more harm than good. The negative effects of the UK’s rubber-stamped design regime are currently evident: respect for design intellectual property is declining, small businesses are being ambushed, and legal resources are being squandered cleaning up messes that never should have occurred. Eliminating the temptation entirely may be the only way to halt the bleeding if meaningful examination is actually outside the UKIPO’s capabilities or willingness. Although it would be an acknowledgement of failure, it would be worse to carry on in denial.
In conclusion, either stand down or reform now to stop enabling bullying.
The Registered Design Division of the UKIPO is at a turning point. Practitioners and impacted companies are sending a clear message: enough is enough. The IPO should either stop supporting this flawed system or change its procedures to stop the flood of unworthy, anti-competitive design registrations. It is unacceptable to continue using rubber-stamped designs. Every ridiculously unoriginal design that is added to the register is more than just a database checkbox; it’s a weapon that could be used by anyone who has no qualms about it. Since its inadequate oversight allows honest entrepreneurs to be bullied in the marketplace, the UKIPO cannot continue to look the other way.
We have witnessed the mayhem caused by a single, ridiculous straw design, and numerous other instances are subtly occurring throughout industry and e-commerce. The purpose of the Registered Designs Act of 1949 was to incentivise creativity rather than provide certifications to bullies. It is past time that the goal was put into action. The UKIPO needs to take back its gatekeeping responsibilities and make sure that only authentic, innovative designs are accepted; if it is unable to do so, it must resign. The call to action is straightforward and unambiguous: either change the system or acknowledge its shortcomings. The UKIPO should take prompt action to establish robust validity checks or substantive examination, and if required, advocate for legislative change to support this. In the event that it does nothing, it implicitly acknowledges that the register will continue to be a free-for-all, and the UKIPO ought to consider whether it is even moral to keep such a system in place. Ultimately, a just market where IP rights represent genuine innovation rather than administrative gimmicks is the aim. Instead of undermining that fairness, the UKIPO’s mission should be to promote it. Now is not the time to be complacent. UK companies, particularly small internet retailers, should have access to a design registry that fosters innovation rather than approving the instruments of their tyranny. The UKIPO must decide whether to review and implement the legal requirements or to not offer registration at all. However, doing nothing is just giving the bullies more freedom. The IPO must make the correct decision now to preserve the integrity of the UK design system and the livelihoods of numerous honest companies. Either reform or pull out, but in any case, stop the rubber stamping right away.
If you have had similar problems with the UKIPO/Amazon/ or need some guidance with the Registered Design system give us a call today on 02380235979 or send an email to info@lawdit.co.uk
