We applied for UK Protected Design registration on the Gaucho BBQ Grill Apron in August 2022 — before we’d sold a single unit. That decision took four months of research to arrive at, and it was the right call.
What UK Protected Design Registration Covers
The registration protects the design’s unique combination of features and proportions — the way the Gaucho looks and is structured as a whole. It doesn’t protect individual components in isolation. It protects the specific design we developed, as it exists, against copying by other manufacturers without permission.
It’s not a patent. It doesn’t cover the underlying concept of a BBQ apron with utility features. It covers our specific implementation of that concept — eleven months of development, four prototypes, and eleven fire test sessions distilled into a finished form.
Why We Did It Before Launch
Three reasons. First: once a product launches, copying happens quickly. A design registration filed after the fact is harder to enforce and leaves a window of vulnerability. Filing pre-launch closes that window entirely.
Second: design registration is significantly cheaper than intellectual property litigation. We’d rather invest in protection than pay to pursue infringement after it’s happened.
Third: it signals something to the market. A registered design is a final design. It tells buyers, retailers, and competitors that this product is complete and owned. That signal matters when you’re a new brand.
What We Still Hold
We still hold the registration. It’s one of the reasons the Gaucho’s design hasn’t changed since July 2022 — we built the product we intended to build, registered it, and haven’t had cause to change it since. The registration isn’t the reason the design is good. But it is the reason we committed fully to it before it went on sale.
