§ Viscount Duncannon,in moving the second reading of the Designs Copyright Bill, and the Designs Copyright Extension Bill, said, that the first of these Bills was intended to grant protection to those engaged in the arts of design. Under the present system, no sooner had a manufacturer brought forward a design which met with the public approbation but it was immediately pirated and imitated. Every person claiming the protection of the present bill would be required, within a limited period, to register his design, and the time of protection would be computed from the day of registration. The second bill extended the provision to certain articles not mentioned in the other bill, and also extended the provisions of the whole of these bills to Ireland.
Lord Broughamsaid, that he spoke the sentiments of his noble and learned Friend, at whose request the second reading of these bills had been deferred, as well as his own, in stating that these bills were well worthy the attention of their Lordships. He considered they effected a great improvement in the present law, by affording protection to those deserving and ingenious persons who were engaged in inventing designs. He thought they were calculated to produce great good, and his only objection to the bills was, that they did not go far enough, that they protected the Manchester designs only, and not the Yorkshire, which were models, and could not be described as drawings. He hoped that, in the committee, the protection would be extended to those models as well as to the designs contemplated by the bill in its present state.
§ Bills read a second time.