Tech companies of every kind use graphic user interfaces (“GUI”) as a powerful differentiator of products, user experience, and branding. Companies are smart to leverage GUIs. It’s well known by ...

In developing patent protection strategies for a product, companies often rely solely on utility patent protection and fail to consider design patent protection. Utility patents cover the usefulness ...

Demand for design patent protections has been increasing in the last decade, and there is no indication that this trend will slow down. James Rieke, partner at Merchant & Gould, spoke to Minnesota ...

Design patents offer valuable protection in a patent portfolio, including conferring different strategic advantages compared to those of utility patents. For example, design patents allow for recovery ...

Christopher Carani draws on Apple’s smartphone litigation with Samsung to try and distinguish what kind of designs are likely to be found to infringe While some will debate whether Apple v Samsung ...

One of the earliest innovations in personal computing was the application of graphical user interfaces (GUIs) as an intermediary between users and computer programs. This innovation made computers ...

Over the past 120 years, more than 900,000 design patents have been issued in the United States for everything from cars and space rovers to desk chairs and tape dispensers. The things around us, ...

The future is only redesigned every so often, so it is worth asking, what will this new technology look like, and how can pioneers protect their user-facing innovations that will define this emerging ...

“Two recent Federal Circuit decisions highlight the importance of the words in the title and claims of a design patent when seeking and enforcing a patent.” Is the scope of a design patent determined ...

“In two recent design patent cases, two courts were at the same stage of litigation dealing with the same design patent, yet came to opposite conclusions.” Two recent cases are some of the rare ...

We live in a world where counterfeiters are getting craftier, big battles are fought at the US Supreme Court over the look of products and businesses are under constant pressure to differentiate ...

July 31, 2023 - Design patents and utility patents have co-existed in harmony — each staying in its own lane, covering its own subject matter — for over 180 years. The U.S. Patent Act was enacted in ...