En Banc Federal Circuit Replaces Legal Framework for Evaluating Obviousness of Design Patents
Highlights
The en banc U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on May 21, 2024, overruled its precedents that had governed evaluations of design patent obviousness for decades
The court instructed decision-makers to instead apply the Supreme Court’s Graham factors
The court held that all references used to challenge a design patent as obvious must be “analogous art,” which includes at least designs in the same field of endeavor as the article of manufacture of the claimed design
Design patents protect new, original, and ornamental designs for articles of manufacture. However, under Section 103 of Title 35 of the U.S. Code, a design patent may not be obtained “if the differences between the claimed [design] and the prior art are such that the claimed [design] as a whole would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed [design] to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which the claimed [design] pertains.”
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