A registered design gives you a monopoly right for the look of a product, protecting both the shape and the pattern or decoration.   A registered design will cover the lines, contours, colours, shape, texture and materials of the product or its ornamentation.

To be registered, a design must:

• be new
• have individual character;
  meaning, it should not remind an informed person of an existing design.

If your design meets these requirements, you may want to consider applying for a registered design.  If you have a registered design, you must renew it every 5 years for up to 25 years.

You may also wish to consider applying to register your design throughout the EU in a Community Design registration.  There is a one year grace period which allows you to market your product up to a year before you apply for protection without destroying the novelty of the design.

Design right gives you free automatic protection for the internal or external shape or configuration of an original design.

Design right allows you to stop anyone from copying the shape or configuration of the product, but does not give you protection for any of the 2-dimensional aspects, for example patterns.

You can protect 2-dimensional designs using copyright or registered designs.

Design right lasts either 10 years after the first marketing of products that use the design or 15 years after creation of the design, whichever is earlier.

For the first 5 years you can stop anyone from copying the design. For the rest of the time the design is subject to a license of right. This means that anyone is entitled to a licence to make and sell products copying the design.

Note: that your design right will only give you protection in the United Kingdom
 

Copyright applies to any medium. This means that you must not reproduce copyright protected work in another medium without permission. This includes, publishing photographs on the internet, making a sound recording of a book, and so on.

Copyright does not protect ideas for a work. However, when an idea is fixed, for example in writing, copyright automatically protects it. This means that you do not have to apply for copyright.

A copyright protected work can have more than one copyright, or another intellectual property right, connected to it. For example, an album of music can have separate copyrights for individual songs, sound recordings, artwork, and so on, whilst, copyright protects the artwork of your logo, but you could also register the logo as a trade mark.

see also Copyright Resources in the IPAN website