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The Constitutionality Of Design Patents, Ralph D. Clifford, Richard J. Peltz-Steele

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

Design patents have been part of American law since 1842. In that time, only just over 600,000 design patents have been issued, with more than half of these being granted in the last twenty years. This quantity is dramatically fewer than the number of utility patents issued which is rapidly approaching 9,000,000 issued patents. Possibly because of the low usage of design patents over time, no case law and little literature address the constitutional issues raised by them. This article intends to overcome that shortcoming. Two constitutional aspects of design patents will be examined.

First, congressional authority to adopt the …