Richards Patent Law » design patents

Intellectual Property Rights Guide Newsletter

Patrick Richards — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 03:40:40 +0000

The inaugural edition of the Intellectual Property Rights Guide was distributed via email today. The Intellectual Property Rights Guide is a publication co-authored by Patrick Richards of Richards Patent Law and Natalie Remien of Remien & Associates and is intended to provide plain language answers to commonly asked intellectual property questions. The first edition included an article written by Patrick Richards titled What’s the Value of Intellectual Property?

If you have any suggestions for intellectual property related topics you would like to see discussed, please leave a comment with your suggestion below. If you would like to subscribe to the Intellectual Property Rights Guide Newsletter, please send your email address to me at patrick@richardspatentlaw.com or by providing your contact information via my contact form.

What’s the value of Intellectual Property?

Patrick Richards — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 02:51:55 +0000

What’s the value of Intellectual Property?

IP rights are not inherently valuable. Their value is the strategic advantage gained by excluding others from using the intellectual property. To be valuable, your exclusionary rights should be strategically aligned with your business objectives. Without a strategic alignment, you may be wasting your investment and missing opportunities to capture valuable market advantages.

The most valuable IP rights are those that provide a competitive advantage over your competitors and build equity in your brand. Whether your products provide unique functionality, improved efficiency or desirable aesthetics, the marketable value is in having your brand recognized as the exclusive source of these offerings.

Utility patents

With respect to your utility patents, your objective is to be the exclusive source of the critical functional aspects of your products. Accordingly, when planning a patent strategy, the most relevant question to ask isn’t, “what does your invention do,” but rather, “what does your invention do that you would like to prevent your competition from doing?” If you can claim capture a valuable distinction, your patent may hold great value.

Design Patents

With respect to your design patents, your objective is to be the exclusive source of products that embody a characteristic visual element. Design patents that protect the aesthetics of your products can tie into your branding and trademark strategies to help you build and maintain long-term value in your products and brand. Preventing others from riding the coattails of your creative designs may be the key to retaining and increasing sales, even when the competition is able to provide similarly functioning products.

Trademarks

With respect to your trademarks, your objective is to have customers recognize your marks as the source for quality products or services within your market. The trademarks you choose may have limited value at their inception, but as your products and services are recognized for their quality and innovation, the goodwill associated with your trademarks grows. Further, like patents, trademarks are assets that your company can license or sell. An experienced intellectual property attorney will help you secure your trademark rights and help you build and leverage their value as your business grows.

Whatever your business or product offerings may be, the value of your IP rights will depend greatly on how well you align your intellectual property protection with your business goals. Make sure you are working with an intellectual property attorney that helps you focus your strategy on valuable rights.

Design Patent Examination at the USPTO More Closely Resembles Registration Than Examination

Patrick Richards — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 07:30:03 +0000

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: