According to a recent blog post at Patently-O, a leading patent law blog, based on the review of 1049 file histories of design patents that issued in the past 12 months, only 1.2% of design patent applications were rejected based on prior art during patent prosecution and over 80% were never rejected at all. In other words, over 80% of the design patent applications that issued as design patents made it through the United States Patent and Trademark Office without any significant obstacles. Further, according to the United States Patent and Trademark Office annual report, in the last five years approximately 90% of all design patent applications issued as design patents. In other words, over that time period, only 10% of design patent applications failed to issue as design patents. These numbers don’t indicate that filing a design patent application automatically results in design patent protection, but it does indicate a very high level of success and a high rate of return on your design patent investment.
Having prosecuted a large number of design patent applications for a wide range of products, I can say these figures match my experience. Accordingly, while design patents are generally thought to afford a narrower scope of protection than utility patents, the ease in which the typical design patent application passes through the United States Patent and Trademark Office to issuance, creates a very favorable environment for protecting your invention’s aesthetic appearance. In industries in which a competitive advantage can be gained through product appearance, and not just product functionality, design patents can be good investments with a high rate of success.
Please contact me if you would like to discuss filing a design patent application for your invention with an experienced patent attorney.
For further information about design patents, please see these related pages:
- What is a design patent application?
- Can I file both a design patent application and a utility patent application on the same invention?
Tags: design patents, patent examination, patent law, uspto
