At a Westminster Media Forum Panel, Dids Macdonald, OBE., CEO of Anti Copying in Design talked about the difficulties facing UK designers with an over complicated set of design laws, lack of clarity over what will happen to the protection of unregistered design rights in EU27 post-Brexit, deal or no deal and the frustrations, 8 years on from the Hargreaves Review, without any meaningful research into the measurement of design rights infringement to influence policy.

The UK design sector is an amazing success story but in a world dominated by a powerful international and national copyright lobby, often it does not get the priority it deserves in terms of robust policy and cost and timely access to enforcement.

Of the one and a half million people employed in the design and design skills sector the majority have less than 10 employees and 67% have less than 4 employees. A talented and creative design army of small businesses producing a staggering 85.2 billion pounds GVA to the UK economy.

Dids shared her thoughts with a packed forum of parliamentarians, Government agencies, educationalists, economists, stakeholders and IP owners, “When I was invited to join this panel, I did query the title and asked that it should be copyright AND design right policy! I see it has remained but that got me thinking….

To  view the full speech download the document below.  View the presentation here.