While copyright law is at the center of a few recent disputes over intellectual property protection for typefaces and fonts, design patents are an often-overlooked mechanism for protecting these designs. Those who develop or license fonts will benefit from the following summary of the available protections for the visual appearance of typefaces and fonts, which includes novel “emoji” sets.
Continue Reading Protecting the Product™: Typefaces and Fonts
This article supplements our previous post with updated 2021 data.
U.S. design patents continue to grow in popularity. Although 2021 saw a slight downtick in the number of issued design patents compared to the previous two years—most likely caused by lower filings during the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic—the number of U.S. design patents that issued in 2021 was still greater than the number of U.S. design patents that issued in each year between 2012-2018, and was more than 50% greater than the number of U.S. design patents that issued in 2012. With the number of U.S. design patent examiners also increasing, we expect the number of issued designs in 2022 to outpace 2021 and possibly set a new annual issuance record.
Continue Reading Recent Trends in Article of Manufacture of Design Patent Claims: GUIs Remain King
Protecting the Product’s Editor-in-Chief James Aquilina and regular contributor Joseph Ambrose will each teach sessions at the American Intellectual Property Law Association’s “Design Rights Boot Camp” on June 23-24, 2022, in Arlington, Virginia.
Continue Reading Two Quarles & Brady Design Lawyers to Present at AIPLA’s “Design Rights Boot Camp” on June 23-24
According to the recently-published 2021 US Design Patent Toteboard, Quarles & Brady was once again a top ten firm nationally for the most United States design patents obtained for its clients in the year 2021. This is the fourth consecutive year that the firm has appeared on this list.
Continue Reading Quarles & Brady Again a Top Design Patent Firm in 2021
A recent decision of the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has fundamentally altered the law on prior art anticipation for design patent applications. In this decision, captioned In re: SurgiSil, L.L.P. et al., No. 2020-1940 (Oct. 4, 2021), the Federal Circuit reversed a decision by the USPTO’s Patent Trial and Appeal Board (“Board”), which had previously affirmed an examiner’s anticipation rejection of a design patent claim for a lip implant based on a prior art reference depicting a similarly-shaped tool for artists.
Continue Reading In re SurgiSil : Much More than a Cosmetic Change to Design Patent Law
In a recent decision, the Review Board of the United States Copyright Office (“Board”) reversed an examiner’s prior refusal to register a copyright in the artistic elements present in the bed shown above, paving the way for the applicant to obtain a copyright registration in this work.
Continue Reading Design Protection: Don’t Sleep on Copyrights
This is the first article in a planned series that will analyze available design protection strategies for various categories of products.
Now that the era of work-from-anywhere and software-for-any-service has fully arrived, obtaining proper legal protection for software is paramount for many companies. However, due to an expansive interpretation by courts of the “abstract idea” exception to utility patent eligibility in recent years, protection for software-based systems and methods via utility patents has been made difficult. Accordingly, companies in this space should look to employ design-related rights to protect their software.
In this post, we will address how design patent, copyright, and trademark laws can be employed to provide protection for software-based designs.
Continue Reading Protecting the Product™: Software
The United Kingdom (UK) officially withdrew from the European Union (EU) in early 2020, which commenced a transitional period that expired on December 31, 2020. During this transitional period, the UK remained subject to the EU Design System and the design laws of the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO). However, as of January 1, 2021, the UK is no longer subject to the EUIPO design regime.
Continue Reading Brexit’s Impact on European Design Registrations
Since April 1949, when legendary golfer Sam Snead took the top prize, the winner of the annual Masters Tournament has been awarded a green blazer with gold buttons on the front and sleeves.
Now, after more than 70 years of use, that color configuration as applied to a jacket—as shown in the mark image below—has become a federally-registered trademark.
Continue Reading Augusta National Blazes a Trail to Registration of its Iconic Green Jacket
Paisley Park Enterprises, Inc., the music publishing company founded by the late artist Prince, recently obtained a federal trademark registration for the purple color shown below known as “Love Symbol #2” in the Pantone Matching System. The registration covers music, video, and motion picture-related recording goods in International Class 009.
Continue Reading Prince’s Estate Makes it Rain Purple on the USPTO