Representations for designs - guidelines superseded 19 March 2012

Introduction

This note reiterates and clarifies practices regarding the filing of representations for designs to be registered by IPONZ under the Designs Act 1953.

The representations of a design serve to identify the design, so that a design applied to an article can be clearly identified, by way of visual comparison with the representations on the register, to be the design that is registered. A copy of the representations is attached to and is an essential part of the Certificate of Registration for the design.

If the Commissioner is not satisfied that the representations supplied completely and unambiguously identify the design, then additional representations of the design, will be required. If additional representations are requested and are supplied then it is possible that the design was not adequately represented at the filing date, and the filing date may require post-dating to the date on which the additional representations were filed.

In some instances the Commissioner may be satisfied that just a single representation or view of the article to which the design is applied is sufficient.

Some countries allow a single application to register several designs for the same sort of article to be made using one or more basic representation documents which may illustrate multiple views of one or many distinct designs. Convention applications may be made in New Zealand based on such documents. Multiple views of a distinct design present in the convention document should be filed together as a single application in New Zealand; distinct designs in the convention document should be filed as distinct design applications in New Zealand; and representations of distinct designs in the convention document should not be mixed up and filed as views of a single design in New Zealand.

If a single application for what are clearly multiple designs or a single design applied to different articles that do not constitute a set of articles is filed, then separate further applications each relating to just a single design applied to a single article or set of articles will be required, and registration on the first application will not proceed until that application has been amended so as to relate to a single design applied to a single article or set of articles.

Electronic filing

Design applications and representations should be filed through our online application service. Digital images of design representations may be filed with IPONZ in the JPEG or GIF formats. 

The applicant is responsible for submitting a full set of representations. Whenever a modification to the representations is proposed by the applicant IPONZ will consider the representations on the form to be a full current set.

Image standards

Images must meet the following criteria:

• Be rendered in black and white, greyscale or colour
• Be able to be printed onto single sided A4 format
• Each image should be labelled with the view of the article that it illustrates, e.g. Front View, Side View, Enlarged View of Edge, etc.
• One or several images may be on each page.
• Each page of images must be submitted online as a single image file in JPEG or GIF format. That is, one file per page.
• To comply with the Regulations, the images must be crisp and clean, and clearly illustrate the features of the article of the design. The images should be devoid of any extraneous matter, (e.g. lettering, dimensions, or background) that does not form an essential part of the design.
• If the design is to be applied to a set of articles, then the representations should illustrate the design applied to every article of the set and be submitted against that article. 

Last updated 6 November 2025