Quarles & Brady partner and editor-in-chief of the firm’s Protecting the Product design rights blog, James Aquilina, and patent engineer Harrison Powell attended the 16th Annual USPTO Design Day on May 4, 2023, in Alexandria, Virginia at the USPTO’s Headquarters.
There was a range of programming at Design Day, including remarks from Derrick Brent
REGISTRATION NOW OPEN – 16th Annual USPTO Design Day on May 4, 2023
Registration for the 16th Annual USPTO Design Day 2023 has been made available and interested parties can register virtually or in person here.
The 16th annual Design Day will be held on May 4, 2023, from 10 a.m.-5 p.m. ET
Save the Date to Attend the 16th Annual USPTO Design Day
The 2023 iteration of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO)’s annual Design Day will be held on May 4, 2023, with options to attend either in-person at USPTO headquarters in Alexandria, Virginia or virtually.
Registration will be made available in April 2023, and we will share the sign-up link with our blog readers at that time. Quarles’ design patent attorneys have spoken at previous Design Days and will once again be in attendance at this year’s event.
Continue Reading SAVE THE DATE – 16th Annual USPTO Design Day Announced for May 4, 2023
In a recent district court decision, a New Jersey federal judge granted summary judgment to an accused infringer of a patented design. Skull Shaver LLC. v. IdeaVillage Products Corp., No.18cv3836 (EP) (AME) (D.N.J. Dec. 28, 2022). In its complaint, Skull Shaver claimed that Ideavillage’s leg shaver infringed its design patent on a head shaver. The patent-in-suit is U.S. D693,060 (“the D’060 patent”) for an electric head shaver, and the accused product is a Flawless Legs Shaver, which is itself covered by U.S. D853,645 (“the D’645 patent”).
Continue Reading Flawless Legs and a Shaved Head? An Ordinary Observer Can Tell the Difference
Oral arguments were held on Thursday, January 12, 2023, in Columbia Sportswear North America, Inc. v. Seirus Innovative Accessories, Inc. The parties faced off in a rematch at the Federal Circuit following an earlier bout involving the same design patent, U.S. D657,093 (“D’093”) for a “Heat Reflective Material,” which as illustrated side-by-side below had been asserted against Seirus’s HeatWave™ material.
Continue Reading Design Patents are Heating Up at the Federal Circuit
As highlighted by a recent decision of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York[1], a party’s failure to properly mark its products with its issued U.S. patent number(s) will very likely result in a complete loss of the ability to recover infringement damages that occurred prior to the delivery of a specific allegation of infringement to an accused infringer. As further explained below, companies should thus very seriously consider the inclusion of patent markings on all relevant products.
Continue Reading Failure to Mark Patent Number on Products Results in Complete Loss of Pre-Suit Infringement Damages
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
Earlier this month, ten of the world’s largest companies were accused of infringing design patents claiming animated graphical user interfaces (GUIs). These assertions were made in addition to at least ten other lawsuits filed since September 2021 asserting animated GUI design patents. Given the breadth of the asserted design patents, these cases potentially raise issues of first impression related to claim construction, infringement, and functionality.
Continue Reading Companies Performing Financial Transactions Stuck in GUI Design Patent Infringement Cases
A recent Federal Circuit decision, Junker v. Med. Components, Inc., No. 2021-1649 (Feb. 10, 2022), serves as a warning to prospective filers that making pre-filing offers for sale, or engaging in discussions for future sales, can be detrimental to one’s ability to obtain both design and utility patents.
Continue Reading Junker v. Medical Components, Inc.: Pre-filing Offers for Sale Trigger Patent “On-Sale Bar”