Your name is Ignatius and you have a flash of creative genius which your wife unkindly describes as a daft moment. Although the resulting sketch of the letter “I” (for Ignatius) would be regarded by some as pretty lousy, under copyright law, it still gets protection from being copied for the entire length of your life plus 70 years. This seems a bit of a bargain, especially when compared to Design Right, which protects designs for ten years, but only if you pay for the design to be registered. 
However, if you decide to develop your sketch into an “I” shaped coffee cup (“the Imug”) and sell it, your copyright protection will be lost for copyright does not protect a work used as an industrial design. So: how many coffee cups do you need to produce before it is considered an industrial design? Answer: 50 cups. Why 50 and not 51? Answer: Because that is the law, sort of. What if you drop one? Answer: Give me a break.
Keeping the manufacturing process to 49 coffee cups is possible, but you are an optimist and decide to pay for the design to be registered. However, to be registered a design must be “new,” and if you have started manufacturing and selling it, it is not “new.” Therefore, your sketch will not be protected by Design Right, and because you have used it in an industrial process, it is no longer protected by copyright. You will be stuffed. Your competitors (if any) could make as many Imugs as they pleased.
To be clear, this does not affect two dimensional works such as the painting of the Mona Lisa; however, many biscuit tins she adorns. It is only if the biscuit tin was in the shape of the Mona Lisa, i.e., three dimensional and Leonardo could find 50 buyers that the problems begin.
Fortunately, there is an exception for works of artistic craftsmanship. Even if Michelangelo had registered his statue of David as a design, he would not have lost its copyright protection. So if you are a (or the) great artist (and it is best to ask your spouse about that) don’t register your work as a design. If you are a so, so artist you could get away with it. For everyone else, register any design with commercial potential or be copied.
© Paul Brennan 2017-2020. All rights reserved.
