The English Queen's Bench Divisional Court has held in respect of certain design applications made by the Ford Motor Company, that design protection is not available for parts employed in the manufacture of automobiles. The logic of the court's decision was that design protection is only available for "articles". In the opinion of the court something only qualified as an "article" if it was "made and sold separately". The court thus concluded that to qualify for protection an article had to have an independent life of its own as an article of commerce and "could not be said to possess such if it were merely an adjunct to a larger item".

June 1994 Index