Registered Designs in Hong Kong – Reform on the Horizon?
Introduction
A public consultation regarding the Registered Designs Ordinance was recently launched in mid-December 2025, which is part of the 2025 Hong Kong policy address (link here) to consolidate Hong Kong as Asia’s “Regional Intellectual Property Trading Centre”.
In this article, the author seeks to define what a registered design is, provides a 6-point summary of the reform, and shares his further comments.
Background
A three-month consultation was launched on 17 December 2025, with the Government seeking to update the Registered Designs Ordinance (Cap. 522; the “RDO”), first enacted in 1997, to “ensure that our registered designs regime is up to date and remains competitive for meeting the changing needs of our industries” (Link here). The full consultation paper (the “Consultation Paper”) could be viewed here. The Government invites submission of public views and suggestions on or before 16 March 2026.
Similar to its previous consultation on copyright reform which we have previously commented on (Link here), the Government has hinted in the Consultation Paper its preferred pathway of reform (though in this case it is not as clear as the copyright reform consultation), which we shall comment on in this article.
What is a Registered Design?
A registered design is a subset of intellectual property (IP) laws concerned with the protection of “industrial designs”, defined as “features of shape, configuration, pattern or ornament applied to an article by any industrial process, being features which in the finished article appeal to and are judged by the eye” under Hong Kong law (S. 2, RDO).
Industrial designs are protected internationally by a number of international treaties, such as the Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property and the TRIPS Agreement[1]. The RDO was enacted in part for Hong Kong to comply with its international obligations under the said treaties.
Under the RDO, industrial designs can be registered with the Designs Registry of the Intellectual Property Department. Registration of an industrial design confers to its owner exclusive rights to manufacture, import, use, sell or hire products in respect of which the design is registered in Hong Kong (S. 31, RDO).
The protection accorded by registered designs overlaps with those conferred by copyright to a certain extent. However, a registered design in theory offers broader and clearer “monopoly rights” than copyright. Unlike the case of copyright, the owner of a registered design need not prove that someone has “copied” its design to enforce his registered design rights. Registered design rights can therefore be enforced even where the alleged infringer/defendant has no knowledge of the registered design in question.
Notwithstanding this advantage, registered designs are still relatively underutilised in Hong Kong. According to statistics published by the Intellectual Property Department, only around 2,000 registered design applications (for around 4,000 designs) were filed annually in-between 2021 and 2024; whereas around 30,000 trade marks and more than 13,000 standard patents (R) were filed annually during the same period. (Link here). No doubt such underuse is an issue that the Government wishes to address with the proposed reform.
Proposed Reforms
The main reforms proposed in the Consultation Paper are as follows:
- Broadening the definition of “Design” and “Article”
The Government intends to broaden the definition of “Design” and “Article” in various ways to cover items that may be excluded under the current RDO. Most notably, the Government proposes to remove the requirement of “industrial process” altogether (i.e. a design no longer need to be manufactured by an “industrial process” to qualify for protection), reasoning that traditional manufacturing methods may no longer be applicable to designs nowadays.
Further, the Government also seeks views on whether RDO should be expanded to cover virtual designs (and if yes, how such virtual design relate to the articles in question), spare parts and partial designs.
- Potential Reform of “Novelty” Requirement
Only “new” designs can be registered. Under RDO, a design is not new/novel if a substantially identical design has already been registered or published “in Hong Kong or elsewhere in the world” (s.5(2), RDO).
The Government observed that other jurisdictions “have moved beyond requiring only novelty” for registering designs, such as the requirement for “distinctive” in Australia and the requirement for “individual character” in EU and UK. The Government observes that there “appears to be a case to consider whether introduction of an additional registrability requirement… may better and more fairly recognise the need of the market for greater differentiation amongst designs, and ensure that designs protected are those resulting from genuine creativity, skills and effort.”. In short, the Government seems to be looking for a way to exclude obvious, run-of-the-mill designs from being registered.
The Government however appears to favour retaining the present system of not conducting substantive novelty examination on registered designs applications (i.e. the Registry examiners would not check whether a design is new or not), no doubt partly due to the extra manpower and resources required to conduct substantive examination, but invites views on possible “alternate enhancement measures”, such as requiring substantive searches being conducted before taking enforcement action.
- Finetuning the Scope of Exclusive Rights
The Government is reviewing the scope of rights conferred to registered design owners, such as:-
- Potentially broadening the scope of exclusive rights to any business/commercial use of a registered design.
- The exclusive rights granted to design owners are currently limited to the article in respect of which the design is registered (e.g. if a design is only registered for household goods, it can only be enforced against others’ use on household goods). The Government is considering extending it to any article in which the design is used.
- Currently, RDO only provides for 2 exceptions/defence to design rights infringement, namely (a) private/non-commercial use and (b) acts done for the purpose of evaluation, analysis, research or teaching (S. 31(3), RDO). The Government invites views on whether new exceptions should be introduced.
On the ownership of rights of commissioned designs (for money or money’s worth), currently the commissioner is presumed to be the design rights owner (S. 3, RDO), which is different from the position of other major industries as well as the position under Hong Kong copyright law, where the designer is presumed to be the owner. The Government thus looks to amend RDO to bring Hong Kong’s law in line with the prevailing international position as well as to be consistent with copyright law position.
- Introduction of a Grace Period for Post-Disclosure Registration
Under the current RDO, any public prior disclosure of a design before filing will destroy the novelty of the design, thus rendering the design registration void. The only notable exception is that a 6-month grace period is provided for disclosure within certain “official international exhibition”, defined as “an official, or officially recognized, international exhibition falling within the terms of the Convention on International Exhibitions signed at Paris on 22 November 1928, and any protocols to that Convention, as revised or amended from time to time” are exempted (S. 9(3), RDO). This exception is rather unhelpful and the Government recognises that “official international exhibitions” under RDO “are rarely held in practice and many local exhibitions do not qualify as such”.
The design laws of many major industries (though not including mainland China) provide for a general grace period, where novelty is preserved so long as design applications are filed within a certain time period (generally 12 months) after disclosure. The Riyadh Design Law Treaty, which is not yet in force and China has not yet signed, also provides for an international standard that requires its signatory parties to provide for a mandatory 12-month grace period for all purposes.
The Government seems to favour the introduction of a general 12-month grace period, which it comments as “the benchmark for a reasonable balance of interests for all market players”.
- Overlapping Protection with Copyright
It is widely recognised that registered design rights overlap with copyrights – the original design drawing of a product is protected by copyright as an artistic work while the product itself is protected by design rights. Different jurisdictions deal with such overlapping in different manners, such as removing the scope of registered design rights from copyright protection in Australia and Singapore; introduction of a “lesser” “unregistered design right” to replace artistic copyright for industrial designs in EU and UK.
In Hong Kong, industrial designs are protected by both copyright and registered design rights. However, the term of copyright protection of design drawings that have been reduced to an industrial product is shortened from the usual term of “life of designer plus 50 years” to 15 (if unregistered) or 25 (if registered) years from the date of first marketing of the product, depending on whether the design is registered (S. 87, Copyright Ordinance).
Upon examining how other industries handle the overlapping of rights, the Government appears to favour retaining the present system of shortening copyright protection term, rather than introducing new systems (such as the regime of unregistered design rights introduced in EU and UK).
- Other Formality Issues
The Government intends to introduce the following changes to “streamline and enhance” the registration process of registered designs systems “with reference to prevailing international norms and practices”:-
- Dispensing with the current statutory requirement on filing priority documents for priority filings;
- Permitting extension/restoration of the 6-month priority period under certain conditions;
- Dispensing with the mandatory requirement for filing a statement of novelty;
- Potential introduction of an option for owner to defer publication of design for a certain time.
The Government intends to leave the following unchanged:-
- Retaining the current system of allowing multiple-design applications;
- Maintaining the status quo for term of design protection (25 years) and renewal process (renewal once every 5 years).
The Author’s Observations
The reforms proposed by the Government are certainly welcome.
The introduction of a grace period is, in the author’s opinion, long overdue. It is almost impossible for a trader to gauge whether a product design would be successful (and thus warrants investment in the form of design registrations) until the product has actually entered the market. Mandating traders to make advance investments for product designs which may end up being unsuccessful seems like a futile endeavour. Providing for a grace period matches better with design and marketing workflow.
Eliminating the requirement of “industry application” also makes intuitive sense and avoids the uncertainty of whether certain products, such as handcrafted products with limited release, would qualify for registered designs protection or not.
However, the author is sceptical if such reforms, even if all implemented successfully, would significantly alter the landscape for registered designs or materially increase the utilisation of the registered designs regime.
As an IP practitioner, the author observes that the main reservation IP proprietors have over the use of registered designs is its unreliability. The novelty of a Hong Kong registered design could be destroyed if a substantially identical prior design had been released anywhere in the world, even if the designer has no knowledge of the prior design’s existence.
As the saying goes, “There is nothing new under the sun.” Even where a designer comes up with an original design entirely independently, there will inevitably be a risk that someone had come up with the same design or highly similar design elsewhere. Thus, there is always a risk that a registered design owner could be heading to Court based on a potentially invalid design registration. Such risk is further amplified as, in civil proceedings in Hong Kong, generally a losing party would be liable for the victorious party’s legal costs. Thus, a registered design owner could be facing financial ruin if it relies on a design registration that it has no idea could be invalid, even where the owner has acted in good faith and has no reason to believe that the design registration is invalid.
Hence, in practice, copyright remains the preferable avenue for rights enforcement in product designs, as the existence of a prior art/prior disclosure will not it itself defeat a copyright infringement claim.
The author thus believes the key to wider adoption of registered designs in Hong Kong may lie in mitigating the “harshness” of the novelty rule.
Perhaps the Government may learn from EU’s experience in this regard. Under Article 7(1) of the European Community Design Regulation (“CDR”), disclosure of a prior design outside EU may not destroy the novelty of an EU design if such disclosure “could not reasonably have become known in the normal course of business to the circles specialised in the sector concerned, operating within the [European] Community”. The author believes such formation strikes a better balance in protecting the rights of registered design owners and that of the general public.
[1] There are also the Hague Agreement Concerning the International Registration of Industrial Designs and the Riyadh Design Law Treaty, both of which have not yet been applied to Hong Kong.
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