A key component of a company’s intellectual property strategy is the protection of its industrial designs, including the ornamental features of products, graphical user interfaces, icons and fonts, to combat competitors copying its products. Industrial design protection fills a niche between (and often in coordination with) copyright, trademarks and trade dress. Often, design rights are best positioned to protect against copies of physical products during the early years of sales when acquired distinctiveness relevant to trademarks and trade dress may be expensive (at best) to prove.
Our Intellectual Property Practice attorneys are experienced in the full scope of protecting industrial designs, including by:
- Drafting, filing and prosecuting U.S. design patent applications before the USPTO
- Prosecuting inbound and outbound Hague International Design applications
- Coordinating foreign design patent strategy and prosecution
- Offensive and defensive counseling and advocacy, including design patent litigation
We integrate design identification and protection throughout our utility patent, trademark and copyright work with clients.
For a selection of our industrial designs representations, click here.
- Companies in diverse fields such as automotive, bicycling, consumer products, defense, fashion, furniture, gaming, hand tools, home automation, lighting, toys, infant products, and musical instruments on U.S. and foreign utility and design prosecution, enforcement, and freedom-to-operate.
- A consumer products company in successfully utilizing a “broadening” reissue design patent application to obtain a claim directed to additional embodiment after grant of a U.S. design patent.
- Companies outside of the U.S., through our work with foreign IP attorneys, in adapting their design patent applications to conform to stringent USPTO design standards.
- A medical device company in defense of a design patent action brought by a competitor over a hand-held surgical tool. Our team obtained summary judgment for the client, which was upheld on appeal at the Federal Circuit.
- A tire manufacturer as the plaintiff in a design patent infringement action against a competitor resulting in a negotiated cessation of sales of the infringing tires prior to trial.