Bill), with important changes to designs law, is currently before Senate for consideration. It includes a much-anticipated change to implement a grace period that will allow designers to publish their designs before applying for design protection. Presently to get an enforceable design right, the design must be “new and distinctive”, meaning that the design must not have been disclosed publicly before the design was filed. For many businesses, this non-publication requirement has made the designs regime impractical since they would not want to incur the cost of seeking design protection unless the design turned out to be commercially successful. For businesses releasing hundreds of new designs to the market each year, this cost is significant.