Unregistered design protection comes into existence the moment you show the design to the market, which makes the date and place of that first showing the entire evidential basis of the right.
Most intellectual property rights are created by an act of registration. A patent exists because it was filed and granted. A registered design exists because an application was made and accepted. The right has a file number, a date, and a certificate.
Unregistered design protection works the other way round. Nothing is filed and nothing is granted. The right springs into existence at the moment the design is first made available to the public, and it exists from that moment for a fixed term without anyone recording that it started.
In the European Union, an unregistered EU design lasts three years from the date the design was first made available to the public. In the United Kingdom, the supplementary unregistered design introduced after Brexit runs the same three years from first disclosure in the UK. A separate and older UK right, design right proper, protects the shape and configuration of an article rather than its surface decoration, and runs for a longer period tied to first marketing.
Three years is not long in a business where a garment is designed a season ahead and sold across the following two. The term begins running the day the design is shown, whether or not the designer registers that day, and by the time a copy appears in a competitor's range the clock has already been running for months.
The threshold for disclosure is lower than most designers assume. A design is made available to the public if it has been published, exhibited, used in trade, or otherwise disclosed in a way that could reasonably have become known to the specialised circles operating in the sector concerned. A stand at a trade fair qualifies. So does a lookbook circulated to buyers, a product page going live, or a press preview. The act that starts the clock is rarely a formal launch, and is frequently something nobody in the studio recorded as significant.
Disclosure does two things at once. It starts the three-year term, and it determines the territory in which the right exists.
That second effect became a practical problem after Brexit. First disclosure in the UK secures the UK supplementary right. First disclosure in the EU secures the unregistered EU design. A designer showing a collection in London and only later in Paris may hold the UK right and not the EU one; a designer premiering in Milan may hold the EU right and not the UK one. Practitioners have advised simultaneous disclosure in both territories as the safest route, while noting that no case law yet confirms whether simultaneous disclosure achieves protection in both.
The EU reformed its design framework with effect from 1 May 2025, and part of that reform removed the express requirement that disclosure take place within EU territory. Whether that deletion means a disclosure made outside the EU can now found an unregistered EU design is a question of interpretation that has not been settled, and the prevailing advice remains to disclose within the EU or to register within the twelve-month grace period.
For a designer, the practical consequence is uncomfortable. The existence and territory of the right depend on facts about a first showing that may have happened at a trade fair, in a lookbook sent to buyers, or on a website, and those facts have to be capable of proof years later when the right is asserted.
The second feature of unregistered protection shapes every dispute that follows. A registered design is infringed by a later design that produces the same overall impression, whether or not the later designer had ever seen the earlier one. An unregistered design is infringed only by copying.
That difference moves the burden. A designer asserting an unregistered right has to establish that the design existed, that it was disclosed on a particular date in a particular place, and that the defendant's product resulted from copying rather than independent creation. The first two elements are questions of record. The third is usually inferred from similarity combined with the opportunity to see the original.
Opportunity to see the original is where the disclosure record does its second job. A design shown at a trade fair the defendant attended, or sent to a buyer the defendant also supplies, supports the inference. If the claimant cannot show the design was disclosed before the defendant's product appeared, the record provides no support.
The timeline matters more in this sector than in most, because the copying happens quickly. A design shown at a February trade fair can be on a competitor's website before the original reaches its own retail launch. When that happens, the claimant is arguing about a sequence measured in weeks, and a document dated to the month rather than the day may not separate the two products at all.
So the same record answers both halves of the case. It establishes that the right exists and when it started, and it establishes that the design was available to be copied before the copy appeared. Without it, a designer with a genuine grievance is asking a court to accept a sequence of events on their word.
Design studios document their work heavily. Sketchbooks are dated by hand. CAD files carry creation and modification timestamps. Tech packs go out to factories with revision numbers. Lookbooks are produced for each season. Sample invoices record when a prototype was made. Photographs of a stand at a trade fair show a design in public on a known date.
This material is useful, and in many disputes it settles the question without argument. A dated invoice from a sampling house, or a trade fair catalogue listing an exhibitor, carries weight precisely because a third party produced the document.
The limitation appears where the record has to come from the studio itself. A sketchbook is dated by the designer. A CAD file's timestamp comes from the workstation that saved the drawing. A lookbook PDF carries the date the file was exported, which may be months after the design was finished and can be changed by whoever holds the file. Where a defendant argues that the claimant's design followed rather than preceded their own, the studio's internal records are evidence produced by the party who needs them to be true.
The gap is narrow and specific. It is not that studios fail to document. It is that the two facts the right depends on — when the design existed, and when it was first shown — are usually recorded by the designer, in systems the designer controls, and an opponent can decline to accept them on exactly that basis.
The record that closes the gap is made by a party outside the studio, at the moment the design exists and again at the moment it is first shown.
When a file is deposited, it is hashed using SHA-256, the hash is timestamped by an accredited Trust Service Provider under RFC 3161, and the timestamped hash is anchored to the Bitcoin blockchain via OpenTimestamps. This is a single automated sequential process, each step depending on the output of the preceding one. The result is a portable certificate recording the file name, the cryptographic fingerprint, the timestamp, and the blockchain anchor.
A free RFC 3161 timestamp from an unaccredited service produces a technically valid record but carries no legal presumption, leaving the holder to argue for its accuracy in any proceeding. With optional eIDAS Article 41 qualification from an accredited Qualified Trust Service Provider, the timestamp carries a legal presumption of accuracy across all 27 EU member states. UK law affords the certificate strong evidential standing without the statutory presumption, and under US Federal Rule of Evidence 901 a documented and reproducible process supports admissibility on ordinary evidentiary principles.
For design specifically, two deposits do most of the work. The first is the design itself at completion — the CAD file, the technical drawing, the print artwork — which establishes the design existed in that form on that date, before any disclosure and before any competitor's product appeared. The second is the disclosure material at the point of first showing: the lookbook as sent, the stand photograph, the page as published, the buyer presentation as delivered.
The second deposit is the one designers overlook. It converts the moment the right came into existence from a recollection into a record, dated by a party with no interest in the outcome. Where the territory of the right depends on where the design was first shown, a dated record of the material shown at each location is what that question turns upon.
Neither deposit is a substitute for registration. An unregistered design right of this kind runs for three years. A registered design can be renewed for up to twenty-five. A registered design can be infringed by a similar product regardless of copying. An unregistered design can be infringed only where it was copied. Where commercial value justifies the cost of registering, the twelve-month grace period allows that decision to be made after the market has responded. The deposit protects the designs that are never registered, which in most collections means nearly the entire range.
The two work together rather than competing. The grace period runs from first disclosure, so a designer deciding in month eleven whether to register needs to know precisely when disclosure occurred. A dated record of the first showing establishes when the window opened and when it closes, which is the information that decision requires. Studios that deposit at disclosure gain a reliable record of their registration deadline as a byproduct.
For an independent designer or small label, the anchored record makes an unregistered right assertable. The three-year term can be evidenced from its first day rather than reconstructed, and the design's existence before the copy appeared stops being a matter of the designer's own dating.
For a brand running several collections a year, the same infrastructure scales to the volume that makes registration impractical. A season may contain hundreds of designs of which a handful will ever be registered. Depositing the artwork at completion and the lookbook at release produces a dated record across the whole range at a cost per design that registration cannot match.
For a solicitor advising on a copying claim, the anchored record changes what can be pleaded. The date and territory of first disclosure, which found the right, are supported by evidence the defendant cannot attribute to the claimant's own systems, and the sequence establishing opportunity to copy is documented rather than asserted.
A design right that begins the moment you show your work is only as good as your ability to prove when that moment occurred. For a right that lasts three years and protects only against copying, the record of first disclosure is not administrative housekeeping. It is the right itself, in evidential form.
This post provides general information about the role of cryptographic evidence in design right disputes. It is not legal advice. For advice on a specific matter, consult a qualified lawyer in the relevant jurisdiction.
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How to Prove You Created Something
Proving Copyright Ownership for UK Creators
James Snell is the founder of Provlyn, a platform providing cryptographic prior proof of IP ownership. provlyn.com