The legal protection for product designs is all about the physical appearance of the whole or part of a product.
How an inventive product works and the branding applied to a product may be protected by different intellectual property rights, namely patents and trade marks respectively.
Design rights are territorial, with different forms of protection within the UK, the EU and other countries.
In addition in the UK and EU, there are 2 levels of protection, depending upon whether or not a design has been registered with the relevant intellectual property office.