Articles

Industrial design is migrating to the virtual world, and the design patent system is migrating with it. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has already granted several thousand design patents on virtual designs, patents that cover the designs of graphical user interfaces for smartphones, tablets, and other products, as well as the designs of icons or other artifacts of various virtual environments. Many more such design patent applications are pending; in fact, U.S.... Read more about Virtual Designs

A design patent owner who wins her suit is entitled to the defendant’s entire profit from the sale of the product, whether or not the design was the basis for buying the product. No other IP regime has this rule, and it makes no sense in the modern world, where a design may cover only a small component of a valuable product. The culprit is § 289 of the Patent Act, a provision added in the nineteenth century, when design patents were very different than they are today. We should abolish § 289 and bring rationality to design patent remedies. Read more about A Rational System of Design Patent Remedies

Design patents have recently burst onto the intellectual property stage, but they are surprisingly underdeveloped for a body of law that is more than a century and a half old. Design patents are, quite simply, a body of law without design: there is little coherent theoretical underpinning for this long overlooked form of intellectual property.... Read more about Design Patents: Law Without Design