Patent Law

Professor Janice Mueller & Daniel Brean have posted a new working-draft article on design patent protection. The article argues "that courts and the USPTO have previously unrecognized flexibility in how they apply the nonobviousness requirement to designs." The authors recommend, inter alia, that courts (1) recognize that nonobviousness jurisprudence (e.g., KSR) has "very limited, if any, applicability to design patentability"; (2) plant patent patentability requirements serve as a better example; (3) the perspective of a non-expert ordinary observer should be used when considering nonobviousness; and (4) design anticipation should be limited to "strict identity situations."

Read the article here.