Replying to a Design Examination Report

What is a Design Examination report?

A Examination Report is a formal letter written by the Design examiner who has assessed whether your application complies fully with the Designs Act 1953. Your Design Report informs you which parts of your application do not comply with the Act. You have the opportunity to respond to any of the issues raised in an Examination Report within 12 months from the date your application was filed. The deadline for response will be noted at the bottom of your Report.
The Office will consider any written response you make to the Report. If your response resolves all the issues, then your application will be accepted for registration. If your response does not resolve all the issues, we will write to you again and you will be given another opportunity to respond.

Responding to a Examination report

If you do not agree with any of the issues raised in your Report, or you are aware of any circumstances that the Office is unaware of that may help overcome any issue raised, you are encouraged to respond to your Examination Report. 

How to Respond

Following the submission of your design application and the assessment of your application you will receive an e-mail a indicating you that there is an examination report in your IPONZ inbox,

To view and respond to your examination report select Respond to Examination Report next to the relevant case number in the task section of your IPONZ inbox, you will have the following options.

To view the design application that you originally filed, select the case number.

Objection Response Documents: To place an objection select Add then choose Select Files, you will be able to upload documents in response to the examination report. To complete select Submit on the bottom right corner of the webpage. You can also enter text in the response field.

Amendment: Selecting Request an Amendment will take you back into your original application and allow you can make small changes to a Design Application for the purpose of correction as defined under the Section 29 of the Act.

Request and Extension of Time: Allows you to request an extension of time to comply with any request. This will be granted at the commissioner’s discretion.

To check the status of your application, you can search the IPONZ database by searching the register. You can do this by entering your application number in the “Case Number(s)” field and pressing Search.