Out-Law / Your Daily Need-To-Know
Plans to remove protection for computer-generated designs from the UK statute book have been set out in the latest move by the government to respond to advances in AI technology.
The proposals are contained in a wide-ranging new consultation on changes to the UK designs framework.
Currently, UK law provides for the protection of computer-generated designs without a human author, in the form of either registered or unregistered design rights. The government acknowledged that the protections could apply in the context of generative AI (gen-AI), highlighting how the law provides for the person who made the arrangements necessary for the creation of the design to be attributed the rights where the design has been computer-generated.
However, the government said protections for computer-generated designs “appear to have been rarely relied on to date and are legally untested”. It is considering changes to the existing legislation, as it believes maintaining the protections could “make it more difficult for designs created by humans to get protection” in the AI age.
“This is because AI tools have the ability to produce large amounts of designs in a short space of time and so could mean that human-created designs are less likely to have the novelty or individual character required to qualify for registered design or supplementary unregistered design protection,” the government said. “In view of this risk to human created designs, we consider this option should be discounted unless we receive evidence demonstrating that these provisions offer sufficient benefit.”
While one of the options under consideration would involve legislative reform, so that “the existing protection for computer-generated designs could be clarified or amended”, the government’s “preferred option” is to remove the protections from UK law entirely. It said there is “little evidence” the protections are “valuable” and cited the fact that other “most leading AI nations”, including the US and EU countries, do not provide for such protections in their legislative frameworks.
Rob Vile, an intellectual property expert at Pinsent Masons, said clarification of the existing legislative protection for computer-generated designs created without a human author would be “welcome” as the existing position in the UK “may not be fit for purpose in the face of the boom of gen-AI”.
“The consultation acknowledges both the risks posed to human design endeavour by computer-generated designs and the confusing fragmentation of the design protection system in the UK since Brexit,” Vile said.
“For example, computer-generated designs without a human author can currently be protected as UK registered designs and UK unregistered designs but not as supplementary registered designs, which was a right created in the UK post-Brexit to compensate for loss of EU design rights in this jurisdiction. Consistency on the approach to computer-generated designs between the different forms of design protection is urgently needed as the current lack of clarity has discouraged designers from seeking to protect and enforce their designs in the UK,” he said.
The government’s plans to remove protections for computer-generated designs from UK law align with similar plans it has set out in relation to computer-generated works in the copyright sphere.
Late last year, the government set out options for reform of UK copyright law for the AI age. While much of the focus on the consultation and subsequent debate around AI and copyright has been around copyright protections for content input to AI models for the purposes of training, the government’s AI copyright consultation also addressed options for reform around copyright protections applicable to AI output.
In relation to existing copyright protection for computer-generated works, the government said at the time that its “preference will be to remove it” if its consultation reveals “insufficient evidence” of its “positive effects”.
According to Gill Dennis, also an intellectual property expert at Pinsent Masons, the question of whether computer-generated designs should be protected has an “element of déjà vu”.
Dennis said: “As the government has already separately acknowledged in the copyright and AI consultation, which closed earlier this year, protecting works generated by AI without human involvement is incompatible with the current legal requirement that a work must be original to be protected by either copyright or, of relevance to this latest consultation, unregistered design right. There is currently a lack of legal clarity over which originality test applies to designs. One requires the time, labour and skill of the author to be assessed and the other requires the author to have added their creative personal touch. However, whichever test applies, it seems that neither is appropriate given that both focus exclusively on input, which can only be provided by a thinking human and not by automation.”
The government said its AI copyright consultation attracted more than 11,500 responses. Its action on AI copyright policy is expected to be influenced by the work of industry working groups and is bound by statutory requirements and deadlines imposed in the Data (Use and Access) Act.
EU designs law was reformed last year. Most of the changes took effect in May this year, though others will not apply until July 2026 or December 2027.
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