1. Short title, extent and commencement.—(1) This Act may be called the Designs Act, 2000.
(2) It extends to the whole of India.
(3) It shall come into force on such date1
as the Central Government may, by notification in the
Official Gazette, appoint; and different dates may be appointed for different provisions of this Act, and
any reference in any such provision to the commencement of this Act shall be construed as a reference to
the coming into force of that provision.
2. Definitions.—In this Act, unless there is anything repugnant in the subject or context,—
(a) “article” means any article of manufacture and any substance, artificial, or partly artificial and
partly natural; and includes any part of an article capable of being made and sold separately;
(b) “Controller” means the Controller-General of Patents, Designs and Trade Marks referred to in
section 3;
(c) “copyright” means the exclusive right to apply a design to any article in any class in which the
design is registered;
(d) “design” means only the features of shape, configuration, pattern, ornament or composition of
lines or colours applied to any article whether in two dimensional or three dimensional or in both
forms, by any industrial process or means, whether manual, mechanical or chemical, separate or
combined, which in the finished article appeal to and are judged solely by the eye; but does not
include any mode or principle of construction or anything which is in substance a mere mechanical
device, and does not include any trade mark as defined in clause (v) of sub-section (1) of section 2 of
the Trade and Merchandise Marks Act, 1958 (43 of 1958) or property mark as defined in section 479
of the Indian Penal Code (45 of 1860) or any artistic work as defined in clause (c) of section 2 of the
Copyright Act, 1957 (14 of 1957).
(e) “High Court” shall have the same meaning as assigned to it in clause (i) of section 2 of the
Patents Act, 1970 (39 of 1970);
(f) “legal representative” means a person who in law represents the estate of a deceased person;
(g) “original”, in relation to a design, means originating from the author of such design and
includes the cases which though old in themselves yet are new in their application;
(h) “Patent Office” means the patent office referred to in section 74 of the Patents Act, 1970
(39 of 1970);
(i) “prescribed” means prescribed by rules made under this Act;
(j) “proprietor of a new or original design”,—
(i) where the author of the design, for good consideration, executes the work for some other
person, means the person for whom the design is so executed;
(ii) where any person acquires the design or the right to apply the design to any article, either
exclusively of any other person or otherwise, means, in the respect and to the extent in and to
which the design or right has been so acquired, the person by whom the design or right is so
acquired; and
1. 11th May, 2001, vide notification No. S.O. 414(E), dated 11th May, 2001, see Gazette of India, Extraordinary, Part II,
sec. 3(ii).
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(iii) in any other case, means the author of the design; and where the property in or the right
to apply, the design has devolved from the original proprietor upon any other person, includes
that other person.