Law Commons^™

Disclosing Designs, Mark D. Janis, Jason Du Mont

Articles by Maurer Faculty

While patent scholars have subjected disclosure doctrines to considerable scrutiny in the context of utility patent law, very little has been written about the role of those doctrines in design patent law. At first blush, this is not surprising: modern design patent documents usually contain short disclosures comprised primarily of drawings, accompanied by very little text. Although this might suggest limited aspirations for design patent disclosures, the story is more complex. Design patents contain only a pro forma claim; it is the disclosure that defines the scope of the protected design. Moreover, although the modern practice of relying primarily on …

Virtual Designs, Mark D. Janis, Jason J. Du Mont

Articles by Maurer Faculty

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. design patent applications for virtual designs represent one of the fastest growing forms of design subject matter at the USPTO.

Our project is the first comprehensive …

Panel Ii: The Global Contours Of Ip Protection For Trade Dress, Industrial Design, Applied Art, And Project Configuration, Mark D. Janis, Susan Scafidi, Orit Fischman Afori, Wendy J. Gordon, Jonathan Moskin

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.