Safestand Limited v Weston Homes PLC & Ors

A registered design must depict one product. A complex or modular product can qualify, and a set of articles can qualify where aesthetic and functional complementarity and ordinary unitary marketing link the articles. Optional components, differing quantities of modular components, and colours used to distinguish co-existing components do not necessarily create separate embodiments. The representations must be read together and consistently; an assembled view is required, but minor discrepancies that can be reconciled do not defeat unicity. Registration guidance does not have force of law and does not require every component to be visible in an assembled view. Design images are interpreted objectively, although a proprietor’s product may confirm an interpretation. The Court of Appeal allowed the appeal. It left undecided whether lack of clarity is an independent ground of invalidity.

Safestand appealed from the decision of His Honour Judge Hacon in the Patents Court, reported at [2023] EWHC 3250 (Pat). Following a trial concerning patent and registered-design infringement, Safestand succeeded on patent infringement but failed on design infringement. The judge declared three re-registered designs invalid, principally because they did not depict a single product and, alternatively, because their subject matter could not be identified with reasonable certainty.

The parties settled their wider dispute shortly before the appeal, but Safestand continued to challenge the validity findings. The central issues were whether the representations depicted single modular products and whether lack of clarity was a ground of invalidity after registration.

1. Appeal allowed. The Court of Appeal unanimously held that the three re-registered designs were not invalid for failing to depict a single product. The alternative clarity issue was assumed in Safestand’s favour but was not finally decided.
2. Registered designs must be interpreted objectively from the registration, especially its images. The proprietor’s conduct and the designer’s intention are irrelevant to that interpretation. Expert evidence may educate the court about the relevant design field, although the Court expressed doubt about using expert evidence to interpret the images themselves. A proprietor’s manufactured product may nevertheless confirm conclusions drawn from the registration.
3. Under section 1(2) of the Registered Designs Act 1949, corresponding to Article 3(a) of the Community Designs Regulation, the design must concern a single product. A complex product is capable of being a single product. A set of articles may also qualify where the articles have aesthetic and functional complementarity and are usually marketed as a unit. Different embodiments of the same design concept do not qualify as one product.
4. A modular product is a type of complex product and may be registered if it remains a single product. The views must be considered together and must be sufficiently consistent to identify one unitary product. An assembled view is required, but registration guidance has no force of law and does not require every component shown in an exploded or partial view to be visible in the assembled view. Minor, reconcilable discrepancies do not defeat unicity.
5. The optional ladder attachment and kickboard components, different quantities of modular components, and the presence of red and green components did not establish alternative products. They were features or optional components of the same modular trestle system. The apparent colour discrepancy in one design was minor and capable of reconciliation.
6. The Court left open whether lack of clarity is an independent ground of invalidity under section 11ZA of the Registered Designs Act 1949. Even on the assumption that it was such a ground, the designs were not unclear because the representations could reasonably be understood as depicting single modular products.

• Court of Appeal (Civil Division): Safestand’s appeal was allowed under [2025] EWCA Civ 374.
• High Court, Patents Court: HHJ Hacon declared the three re-registered designs invalid following the judgment at [2023] EWHC 3250 (Pat).