Protection of aesthetic appearances in the Copyright Act 2021 and Registered Designs Act 2000

24 August 2023

Allen & Gledhill Partner Dr Stanley Lai, SC, Senior Associate David Lim and Associate Linda Shi contributed an article titled “Protection of aesthetic appearances in the Copyright Act 2021 and Registered Designs Act 2000” to Bits & Bytes, a monthly online bulletin hosted on the website of the Centre for Technology, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence and the Law (TRAIL) at the Faculty of Law, National University of Singapore.

The article notes that the interactions between the new Copyright Act 2021 and the Registered Designs Act 2000 have stymied many a neophyte in the world of intellectual property rights. The layman who perceives the Graphical User Interface (GUI) applied to the latest new-fangled tech release may consider that artistic copyright would apply to protect such a sleek and aesthetically pleasing work of art, before only subsequently discovering that their reliance on artistic copyright protection was misplaced given the strictures of the Copyright Act 2021.

While aesthetic appearances may potentially obtain protection under the registered designs regime or the copyright regime, certain provisions have been enacted to minimise this overlap and prevent concurrent protection being provided to the same work under both regimes. These provisions are targeted at reducing the scope of copyright protection for certain artistic works that have been registered or ought to have been registered under the Registered Designs Act 2000, and, by extension, GUIs, which are registrable as designs under the RDA.

This article elaborates.