How to Get an Icon Design Patent
Imagine protecting your icons without spending tens of thousands and years of time filing a software utility patent. Why not file design patents on your user interfaces? Sure, design patents would protect only the ornamental appearance, but the right strategy can lead to a valuable design patent portfolio on your icons and user interfaces. Moreover, you will likely enjoy a higher success rate in obtaining an icon design patent rate.
Need an icon design patent? Contact US patent attorney Vic Lin at vlin@icaplaw.com to explore how we can help protect your icons and user interfaces.
What Icon Design Patents Give You
Design patents on icons will give you the ability to stop others from showing similar looking icons and images on display screens.
Technically, design patents are directed to articles of manufacture, such as computers. Practically, a design patent on a graphical user interface, such as an icon, would give the patent owner the right to stop others from showing similar looking interfaces, whether or not they make the hardware.
Owners of icon design patents, therefore, can go after makers of software for infringement even if such companies make no hardware.
In essence, GUI design patents can provide surprisingly broad patent rights. Though design patents will not give you the same type of protection on functionality the way utility patents would, you may nonetheless end up with multiple ways to block competitors without ever asserting a utility patent.
How to Protect Computer-Generated Interfaces and Icons with Design Patents
What if you have an interface with a combination of design elements? With the right strategy, you can obtain strong protection over both individual components as well as combinations of key components of the screen.
One strategy is to file multiple design patent applications where each application covers a different combination of visual elements.
Can You Protect Moving Images or Animated Interfaces with Design Patents?
Yes, you can protect animated GUI’s and moving images in a design patent. The trick is to have the design patent drawings illustrated correctly.
Our firm works with experienced patent illustrators who can draft design patent drawings according to our specific instructions.
How to Protect a Sequence of Computer Images with a Design Patent
A design patent application can be carefully crafted to protect a sequence of visual elements. This can be particularly helpful for innovative apps where the user interface undergoes a sequence of steps.
Where an app takes the user through a sequence of interfaces through the user’s input, a design patent application may provide protection that would be difficult or most costly to obtain with utility patents.
How to Use GUI Design Patents to Protect the Display of Information
Remember that design patents protect the ornamental appearance of a design, and not its functionality. That being said, you can show a combination of visual elements on a screen that protects:
- the visual image of each icon on the screen;
- the positional relationship between the visual elements on the screen;
- certain text and its location relative to the other visual elements on the screen;
How to Use Broken Lines to Get Broader Design Patents
Broken lines serve a very useful role in design patents. The strategic use of broken lines can broaden the claim of a user interface design patent, thereby giving the owner broader coverage against potentially infringing user interfaces.
When we prepare design patent applications, broken lines may or may not be used depending upon the specific strategy being implemented for each client.
How the USPTO Will Examine Icon Design Patent Applications
The USPTO recognizes that the need to update their examiation guidelines on computer-generated interfaces and icons. Though this notice is unpublished as of the date of this post, the guidelines therein will promptly go into effect.
One major change is the removal of the requirement to show borders of a device in broken lines as long as the title and claim language sufficiently describe an article of manufacture.
More importantly, the USPTO has begun using an AI tool to search prior art for design patent applications. I might be wrong, but the use of AI-assisted examination of visual images by USPTO design examiners will likely lead to more prior art rejections. It would not surprise me if patent examiners issue more obviousness rejections under Section 103 in design patent applications for icons and computer-generated interfaces.
Work with a Design Patent Attorney Who Knows How to Protect Icons and Interfaces
Want to explore working with US design patent attorney Vic Lin? Reach out at vlin@icaplaw.com and see how we can put our expertise to work for you.
