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Prior to the registered Community design system becoming operational in April 2003, the UK received around two-thirds of its design applications through intellectual property agents, the remainder being received directly from individual designers or small businesses. However, the situation now is that 95 per cent of newly registered designs, which are effective in the UK, are registered at Community level. As a result, the user base of the national designs registry has reversed, with about two-thirds of the total number of applications coming from small businesses without any legal representation. There are, therefore, still recognised benefits to the businesses that do not need, or cannot afford, to register their designs at Community level in being able to register their designs in the UK alone. This is partly because prior disclosure in any member state, especially through registration, will put a designer in a strong position to resist and, if necessary, to invalidate any Community or national design registration gained by a competitor at a later date. These proposals will therefore be of considerable interest to designs applicants and to the intellectual property profession.
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The procedure of applying for the registration of new designs will be simplified. Unnecessary burdens will be removed, yet care has been taken to ensure that these new measures do not undermine the interests of the public in general. In particular, the introduction of a multiple design application system will offer savings in terms of the time taken to complete an application to register a number of designs at the same time and also savings with a new fee structure to reduce the cost of registering such multiple designs.
My department has consulted widely and has met with a cross-section of individual designers, as well as with representatives of the legal profession who specialise in intellectual property. I am satisfied that these proposals are accepted as sound and that they reduce processing complexity without unduly affecting the balance between rights holders and third parties. As such, they have been welcomed by those who represent the interests of small and larger businesses alike.
Articles 3 to 5 of the draft order seek to remove burdens from the examination process by stopping the requirement on the registrar to satisfy himself that the design passes the tests of novelty and individual character. At present, only a minority of designs in the marketplace is registered. That had made examination of these grounds very problematic, as such designs are not available to be searched in the registers maintained by the national and Community authorities. This matter was compounded by the new criterion for novelty introduced when the designs directive was implemented in the United Kingdom in 2001, as practically every earlier design in any marketplace in the world must be considered. This makes it impossible for an examiner to carry out a conclusive search in all the relevant overseas territories in order to satisfy himself that a design is indeed a new one.
These problems led the Patent Office to take the decision in 1999 to limit the number of applications it examined to cases where a particular examiner was aware of relevant early designs. The uncertain and somewhat arbitrary nature of this process will be abandoned when these changes take effect because the registrar will no longer be able to refuse to register a design on the grounds of lack of novelty or individual character. This will thus remove the current uncertainty as to whether, and to what extent, any particular design was searched and determined to be new before it was registered.
Articles 11 to 14 of the draft order seek to introduce a multiple design application system so that applicants or their professional representatives may file as many designs under the cover of one application as they wish and without any administrative restrictions. This new system will largely align us with other national systems as well as with the registered Community design system.
Article 15 of the draft order deletes the prohibition on the public inspection of certain classes of registered designs contained in Sections 22(2) and 22(3) of the 1949 Act. This prohibition means that some classes of registered designs cannot be inspected by the general public for a period of two or three years after registration, even though they may be enforced against third parties
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Article 17 of the draft order is designed to make it easier for a proprietor to restore a registration that he has allowed to lapse due to non-payment of the renewal fee. It will have no impact on the general public other than to ensure that the proprietors of registered designs are able to reinstate their legitimate rights in a greater number of circumstances.
I thank the Members of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee for finding that the present proposals are appropriate to be made under the Regulatory Reform Act 2001 and for recommending them to the House. The Committee in another place has also considered the proposals. It concluded that they remove burdens within the meaning of the Regulatory Reform Act 2001 without removing any necessary protections or preventing the exercise of any existing rights or freedoms. Both committees have now unanimously recommended that the order be approved. I beg to move.
Moved, That the Grand Committee do report to the House that it has considered the draft Regulatory Reform (Registered Designs) Order 2006 [23rd Report from the Regulatory Reform Committee].—(Lord Sainsbury of Turville.)
4.30 pm
Lord De Mauley: I thank the Minister for explaining this draft order in some detail. The regulatory impact assessment states that the aims of the order are:
- “to encourage more businesses to seek registration; encourage UK businesses to innovate; reduce the level of copying of new designs in the UK; make the system fairer for all applicants”.
We notice that this system runs in parallel with the Community design system that was brought about by the designs directive. Can the Minister tell the Committee whether it is possible for a UK company to have an approved design under the UK Act and for another company to have an identical, or very similar, design approved under the EC system? If so, what happens when the other company starts to sell its product in the UK in competition with the product of the UK company? Which one is protected from the other?
We welcome the proposal to reduce the standard of care required for restoration of lapsed design registrations to match the standards in other forms of intellectual property protection.
On the proposal to end substantive examination for novelty, the order would remove a burden and would introduce some procedural clarity, albeit that there
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I also note that the report of the Regulatory Reform Committee of the House of Commons indicated its support for the draft order, as the Minister mentioned, subject to slight revision to ensure consistency in the references in Articles 8 and 9 to “sections of this Act”. That revision seems to be appropriate, and was accepted by the Patent Office. We have no objection to the proposal to allow multiple applications, although we have no evidence on which to judge the savings that would accrue. There is potential for lower costs, but that depends on the level of the fees for applications.
We support the proposal to make all designs open to public inspection. Indeed, we think that the proposal could go further. The Patents Act 1977 changed patent law to open most of the Patent Office correspondence files of published patents to third-party inspection. The same measure was enacted for trade marks by the Trade Marks Act 1994. The files of Community designs are open to public inspection. There is therefore no reason to keep the correspondence files of published registered designs secret. To do so also appears contrary to the spirit of open government. We do not see why the files of designs, unlike any other UK form of intellectual property and unlike Community designs, should be kept secret. Indeed, the files should be opened to allow third parties more effectively to do the job of challenging bad registrations from which the registry proposes to resign. For example, where priority is claimed, the public should have access to the priority document and any translation thereof. Can the Minister make any commitments in this regard?
Lord Razzall: I join the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, in thanking the Minister for the way in which he has explained quite a complicated issue. The Minister will know that I have consistently in this Room and on the Floor of the House congratulated the department on how it conducts its consultation exercises. That has not yet persuaded me that my party should abandon our policy of abolishing the Department of Trade and Industry, but it will be important that the culture of consultation survives the transfer of functions as they go to other departments.
There is only one point that concerns me about the consultation. I certainly welcome the proposition that the novelty test should be abandoned. I am slightly concerned that in the public consultation exercise the Chartered Institute of Patent Agents suggested that the registry should consider alternative approaches to the registration process, such as the Australia model,
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- “agreed that the Registry should either ‘search or not search’ and that the present situation should be clarified”.
That does not seem to me to answer the question of why the CIPA recommendation has been rejected. I should be grateful if the Minister could explain that.
In general, we support the order and think that it is a very important reform.
Lord Sainsbury of Turville: I am grateful to both speakers for making those points. I think that the first is relatively easy to answer. Obviously, it is possible for the same design to be registered at a national and a Community level. In those circumstances, the latter design registration would be liable to be declared invalid and registering the earlier design will make it easier to enforce and protect it. If you later register a design in the Community which covers the UK but someone can point to an earlier design in the UK, it is clear that that is the one that is declared valid.
On searches, it is possible for a person to ask the Patent Office Search and Advisory Service to search prior art. That is a commercial service charged at commercial rates. However, the search extends only to registered designs, not to designs in the market place that may have anticipated the demands. So, in this particular case, there is a commercial service but it applies only to the registered designs. I think that the Australian model could not be effected without requiring primary legislation, but I will write to the noble Lord on that point. I commend the order to the Committee.
On Question, Motion agreed to.
Adoption and Children Act 2002 (Consequential Amendment to Statutory Adoption Pay) Order 2006
4.40 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Trade and Industry (Lord Sainsbury of Turville) rose to move, That the Grand Committee do report to the House that it has considered the Adoption and Children Act 2002 (Consequential Amendment to Statutory Adoption Pay) Order 2006.
The noble Lord said: As Members of the Committee will be aware, the Work and Families Act 2006 achieved Royal Assent last month. The Act seeks to deliver a number of the Government’s commitments set out in the Pre-Budget Report of 2004 and in the Government’s response to the work and families consultation in 2005.
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The regulations on maternity and adoption leave represent the next step in that ongoing process. Before turning to the detail of these regulations, I would like to say a little about the work and families package in general. This is a significant programme, designed to offer practical and very real support for working families, while bringing forward a number of measures which employers have told us would be helpful for them.
We all recognise that families today face increasing challenges in balancing their home and working responsibilities. It has to be right to offer children the best start in life, but this also has to be achieved against the demands of creating an increasingly competitive economy. The result is that many families struggle to find this balance. This problem will become more acute as we are likely to see more and more of our workforce needing to take time out of the labour market during their careers to care for children or elderly relatives, or both.
Business knows that to succeed it needs to employ the most talented workforce it can. Many employers now realise that an integral part of any strategy aimed at achieving this includes giving employees the opportunity to strike the right balance between work and family life. This gives employers access to a wider pool of talent to recruit from in the first place, and there is increasing evidence showing that a healthy work-life balance reduces staff turnover, reduces absenteeism and raises morale.
The regulations before us today respond to these changing patterns of employment and seek to provide genuine choices about balancing work and family life in the crucial first months, and genuine support for employers in ensuring that the balance works for them too.
I am very proud of the Government’s track record in introducing measures to support working families. We have already created more than 1 million additional childcare places; guaranteed all three and four year-olds a free part-time nursery place; and improved financial support through increased child benefit and working tax credits. Working families have benefited from improved maternity leave and pay, new rights to paternity and adoption leave and the right to request flexible working.
These regulations deliver a number of measures which will benefit both working families and their employers. They result from the close consultation with stakeholders, including parents’ groups, trade unions, businesses and their representative organisations, and individuals.
The Government also worked closely with an advisory group of human resource experts, set up to look at how we could introduce these changes whilst minimising any additional burden on employers. A clear objective throughout the planning of the work and families legislation has been to establish a framework of rights and responsibilities for both employers and employees, consistent with the Government’s better regulation agenda.
Some elements of the regulations derive from powers in the Work and Families Act, while others depend on prior primary legislation. The regulations are due to come into force in October this year, in line
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Turning to the detail, the new regulations will mean that all pregnant employees can take up 52 weeks’ maternity leave. At present, all pregnant employees are entitled to 26 weeks’ ordinary maternity leave, and most to a further 26 weeks’ additional maternity leave. However, around 20,000 women per year are excluded from additional maternity leave because they have not worked for their employer for long enough to qualify.
4.45 pm
This means that if the Government took no action to remedy the situation, when maternity pay is extended to nine months from April 2007 those women would be entitled to the extended pay but not the leave that would allow them to benefit from it. These regulations remove this inconsistency by removing the existing qualifying criteria for additional maternity leave so that all women will be able to take up to 52 weeks, if they wish, and to make full use of the 39 weeks’ maternity allowance. The extension of maternity and adoption pay from 26 to 39 weeks will be achieved via a separate set of maternity and adoption pay regulations. The pay regulations are subject to negative resolution and will be laid before the House shortly.
With the introduction of these new regulations, more employees are likely to choose to spend longer periods away from work on maternity or adoption leave. This should be of very significant benefit to working families, but in making these changes we also recognise that employers will need to managethose periods of time. Taking that into account, the new regulations introduce a number of measures specifically aimed at benefiting employers. Prior to 2003, a woman was required to give only 21 days’ notice to her employer before starting her maternity leave. When we talked to employers about this issue, they told us that that was too little and that it caused real difficulties in arranging and managing cover.To counter this, we extended the notice period to15 weeks before the baby was due.
In the same way, during the work and families consultation in 2005, employers told us that the28 days’ notice an employee needed to give when changing her date of return from maternity or adoption leave was simply not long enough to allow them to plan ahead properly, particularly given the proposed extension to the pay period. We have listened to that concern, and these new regulations will extend the period of notice that the employee must give to eight weeks if she wishes to return to work earlier or later than previously agreed.
During the consultation, we also heard from some employers that they sometimes felt unable to make contact with employees on maternity leave and that there was a need for a stronger framework to support communication between parents and their employers during leave periods. The regulations are therefore introducing the so-called “keeping in touch days”. These are designed to allow employers and employees
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We recognise that keeping in touch days will not be everyone’s preferred option. Employers and employees may simply wish to make contact with one another without the employee actually doing any work; for example, to talk about the woman’s plans for returning to work or simply for an update on developments at work while she has been away. The regulations clarify that this type of reasonable contact during maternity leave continues to be not only allowable but also encouraged.
Additional measures to help employers, particularly with regard to the administration of statutory maternity and adoption pay, will be delivered by the pay regulations I referred to earlier.
It is obviously crucial that new legislation is accompanied by clear and helpful guidance. With that in mind, I am grateful to the Equal Opportunities Commission for its helpful recommendation that we should produce a written statement of maternity rights and responsibilities for employers and employees. We are taking that idea forward, and it will help to underpin the legislative changes we are introducing.
The regulations before us today also remove the small employers’ exemption. This move clarifies the rules on the right of return after additional maternity leave, making it clear that a woman cannot be selected for redundancy or dismissed simply because she is pregnant or on maternity leave, regardless of the size of the organisation.
I would like now to speak very briefly on the other statutory instrument before us today. The order makes a technical amendment to the statutory adoption pay legislation, bringing the provisions for unmarried couples jointly adopting a child into line with the existing provisions for married couples and civil partners. The effect will be to ensure that only one member of an unmarried adopting couple is able to receive statutory adoption pay.
The order applies to adopters whose child is expected to be placed with them for adoption on or after 1 October 2006. We expect the number of adopters and employers affected to be very small. In total, about 4,000 adoptions are eligible for statutory adoption pay each year. Only a very small number of those will be affected by this order.
Although the order is not part of the work and families package, we have laid it before the Committee alongside the regulations simply in order to make
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