Industrial design regime in Sri Lanka and global competitiveness

The value of designs to enhance a useful product's marketability is unquestioned. Designers are now employed in virtually every industry to create “eye-appeal” for products and to differentiate between the many products in a crowded market to attract consumers’. Although not for a definite demarcation; field of design includes three main classes. According to the definition of World Intellectual Property organization (WIPO), Industrial Design constitutes an ornamental or aesthetic aspect of an article which may consist of three dimensional features, such as the shape of an article, or two dimensional features, such as patterns, lines or color. However, Protection of industrial design through legislation specifically directed to that end is confined to this third class of designs which are decorative designs, are those which serve to beautify industrial products in daily use. In the field of Intellectual property of Sri Lanka, industrial designs don’t seem to play a vital part in the economic progression. It is evident that under the current legal protection of industrial designs, overlap of rights makes cumulative protection possible in the area of design rights in Sri Lanka.In the above context main research problem of this paper is to examine ‘difficult hurdles for designers’ in Sri Lanka and the impacts of relaxing those standards in the effective contribution of the nation toward Global economy. Firstly, the emphasis on absolute novelty which has a very high threshold is a great threat for innovative design- incentive industries. Other factor is that as stated in section 30 of the IP Act, exclusion of the functional features of a product will also limit the scope of design protection. In addition it’s evident that an industrial design can be protected under other Laws such as copyright and unfair competition, where appropriate. Therefore it seems that there are various levels of protection available to designs which will obstacle economic growth through innovation.  Also this would give an overview of the statistical information of National Intellectual Property Office (NIPO) as to the number of registrations out of applications for industrial designs and the trends in design applications.  Moreover, it’s important to touch upon the importance of design industry toward global market competitiveness by analyzing comparative jurisdictions like US, UK, Canada and India. The research methodology of this work will be mainly books, number of journal articles and internet articles used to gather secondary data. Most importantly the provisions of the IP Act of Sri Lanka will be analyzed to extract the different obstacles prevail for design innovation.    Further, this research will provide appropriate recommendations to soothe these rigorous standards like improving the awareness among industries to enhance to number of application files for design protection and rectifying the delays of granting procedures especially in novelty examinations. In addition relaxing the standards of the “functionality doctrine” and looking upon the other spheres of protection for designs such as copyrights, unfair competition and patents which also has a say in broadening the sphere of innovation in Sri Lanka.