The Copyright Act provides exceptions for infringement in cases where the work in question strays from copyright to the realm of industrial design.
According to section 64 of the Act, if a design is applied to a \”useful article\”, it is not an infringement of copyright or moral rights in the design or the artistic work from which the design was derived by making the useful article, or by making a drawing or other material reproduction of the article, if the owner of copyright in the artistic work or design, anywhere in the world, authorizes the reproduction the useful article in a quantity of more than fifty.
It is also then not an infringement to do with the reproduced article or other reproduction anything that the copyright owner had the sole right to do with the underlying design or artistic work.
This exception does not apply in the case of graphic or photographic representations applied to the face of an article, trade-marks or labels, material with a woven or knitted pattern, material that is suitable for piece goods or surface coverings, material that is suitable for making wearing apparel, architectural works, representations of real or fictitious beings, events, or places, or articles sold as a set of fifty or less.
Section 64 is an attempt to reduce duplication of intellectual property protection for works that are properly within the scope of industrial design. The works that qualify for this exception, generally, are the sorts of works that would qualify for industrial design protection. Section 64 of the Copyright Act forces the author to choose the proper form of protection for her work. Otherwise, it would be possible for an author to unfairly extend her design protection (which lasts only 10 years) for an indefinite period of time (the term of the copyright).