Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants

Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants

What Australian designers need to know about replicas – the law

That line wasn’t written about chairs and pendants, but it could have been. In the replica furniture and lighting world, sunlight means putting the facts in front of people: showing the original and the “look-alike” side-by-side, explaining what’s really going on, and letting architects, specifiers and clients see the difference for themselves.

For Australian designers, that kind of openness is often just as important as the black-letter law. Sometimes the law can step in and stop a copy; other times, small changes, timing issues or missing paperwork mean you don’t have a clean, winnable case, even when the copying feels obvious. That tension between what feels “wrong” and what you can actually prove in court is usually where the real-life stories start.

Imagine this. You’ve poured months into a chair, a light or a table. It’s finally out in the world – in a showroom, in glossy photos, in carefully curated Instagram posts. Then one day a client sends you a link: “Isn’t this…your design?”

Or you walk into a café and spot a “familiar” pendant over the counter. It’s not your product, but it might as well be. The owner proudly tells you they bought a “replica” online for a fraction of the price. You smile politely, then go home and stare at your drawings, wondering what the law can actually do for you.

These scenarios are now common for Australian designers. The replica market – from Matt Blatt–style “inspired” chairs to look-alike lighting and furniture – has left many creatives asking the same questions: Do I have any rights? Can I stop this? And if not, what can I realistically do to protect my work?

What does the law actually protect?

In Australia, there are three main legal tools designers typically look at:

• Copyright – protects original artistic works such as drawings, plans and certain 3D forms that qualify as “artistic works”.
• Registered designs – protect the visual appearance of a product (shape, configuration, pattern or ornamentation) once registered.
• Trade marks – protect brands (names, logos, sometimes shapes) used to distinguish your products in the market.

For many furniture and lighting products, registered designs are the most relevant. They protect the overall look of a finished product, not just the drawings. But they only help if you register early enough and the design is truly new and distinctive.

Copyright can help where the product itself qualifies as an “artistic work” (for example, a highly sculptural piece), or where someone reproduces your drawings or promotional images without permission. It is less reliable once your design has been manufactured and sold at scale, because of how the “corresponding design” rules operate.

Trade marks will not stop someone copying your shape, but they can stop them using a confusingly similar name, logo or packaging. Think of the Coca‑Cola contour bottle shape: it’s been protected by both trade mark and design law over the years, not just by “goodwill”.

Why you can’t always “win” on replicas

It’s tempting to think: “If it looks like my product, surely that’s illegal.” Unfortunately, the law is more demanding than that.

Some hard truths

Small changes can matter a lot. If a copycat tweaks key features – adjusts dimensions, changes leg shapes, alters joins – it may be enough to avoid infringing a registered design or to make a copyright claim too risky.

Timing is critical. If you only think about designs long after you’ve launched, you may have already destroyed the “newness” you need to register.

Evidence is everything. Courts don’t decide on gut feeling. They compare drawings, prototypes, timelines, sales, marketing and a lot of detail that many designers simply don’t have neatly documented.

Cost and stress are real factors. Even with a decent case, running litigation against a large retailer can be slow, expensive and emotionally draining. Sometimes the commercial cost outweighs what you’re realistically going to recover.

That’s why you see a mix of outcomes. In some cases, designers have successfully forced retailers to pull or change products. In others, where everyone felt the product was a copy, the legal risk of losing was simply too high.

A “hard‑won” success story

Take a local lighting designer whose signature pendant was quietly copied by a large retailer. At first glance it looked “inspired by” rather than identical. When we put the drawings, CAD renders and product photos over each other, though, the shapes and details lined up almost exactly.

We spent weeks collecting evidence: old sketches, dated emails, invoices, photos from the first exhibitions, and clear comparison images. Only once we had that material were we willing to say, in writing, “this isn’t just similar; it’s a copy.”

A carefully crafted letter followed, backed by solid evidence and a realistic proposal. There was no overnight victory – just a lot of back‑and‑forth – but eventually the retailer withdrew the product and re‑released a different design.

From the outside it looked simple. From the inside, it was all about preparation, patience and strategy.

When the law can’t quite keep up

There are other matters where everyone in the room – designers, architects, even clients – feels in their gut that something is a copy, but the law struggles to catch up.

Sometimes the copier has changed just enough. Sometimes the original designer didn’t save clear dated drawings or contracts. Sometimes the new product hit the market years after the original, raising questions about whether the design was still “new”.

In those situations, the advice has to be brutally honest: you might be right morally, but you don’t have a clean, winnable legal case. That is frustrating, but it’s better to hear it early than to pour time and money into a fight you’re likely to lose.

It’s also where strategy comes in: instead of chasing one difficult copy, you focus on doing things differently going forward – better paperwork, better product launches, better branding, better relationships with specifiers.

“Sunlight is the best disinfectant”

Justice Louis Brandeis famously said, “Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants.”

In the replica space, that’s still true. Putting an original and a “replica” side‑by‑side, and showing architects, specifiers and clients just how close they are, can often shift behaviour faster than a court case.

Some designers now build this into their practice: comparison decks, education sessions with key clients, “why we don’t use replicas” policies in studios. It’s not about public shaming; it’s about making the copying visible so people can make informed choices.

Practical steps designers can take

Here are some real‑world things you can do even if you never go near a courtroom:

• Think early about design registration. Before you show your hero piece widely, get tailored advice on whether it’s worth filing a design application and how to time that with your launch.
• Keep your paper trail. Save dated sketches, CAD files, prototypes, emails with clients and photos of early exhibitions or installs. They are gold if you ever need to prove you were first.
• Use clear contracts. Make sure your agreements with manufacturers, retailers and collaborators spell out who owns what, and what can and cannot be done with the design.
• Protect your brand. Even if you can’t always stop a shape, you may be able to stop someone using a confusingly similar name or logo.

When it comes to protecting a key product, the one thing I would not recommend is filing a design on your own.

On paper, the online forms look straightforward. In reality, a lot of the important decisions happen before you click submit: choosing the right images and views, deciding how much detail to show or hide, timing the filing around launches and fairs, and working out whether the design is even registrable (or whether copyright or trade marks are better tools for that particular piece). If any of that is done badly, you can end up with a registration that is too narrow, too easy to “design around”, or vulnerable to being knocked out later – which means you think you’re protected when, legally, you are not.

That’s where we come in. Our job is to look at your actual product and your business plans and then:

• work out whether a design filing is the right move at all
• shape the application so it captures the real value in your design, rather than just a pretty picture
• time and coordinate it with your launches, marketing and collaborations so you don’t accidentally destroy your own “newness”

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Please note the above article is general in nature and does not constitute legal advice.

Please email us info@iplegal.com.au if you need legal advice about your brand or another legal matter in this area generally.