Posts Tagged: "design patent"

IPWatchdog Annual Meeting Now VIRTUAL CON2020

IPWatchdog® CON2020 has gone VIRTUAL!   The IPWatchdog® Virtual CON2020 will endeavor to address the issues facing innovators, creators and brand owners as they find it increasingly difficult to monetize their proprietary creations in an economy where many large enterprises no longer want to pay for what they choose to implement and/or sell, and there is scant legal recourse to…

The Most Common Design Patent Application Rejections (and How to Avoid Them) – Part II

In Part I of this article, we examined the top three rejections for design patent applications, which are due to non-enablement, inconsistency, and ambiguousness. The fourth most common reason for rejection of design patents is for objections to the drawing disclosure, which we will discuss here. Objections to the drawings occur when something is incorrectly shown in the drawings, but the drawings are still understood by the Examiner. In the stereo receiver example above, if the bottom plan view was present in the original disclosure but the front elevational view did not show shading on the feet, the Examiner would likely issue an objection, stating that shading was not shown on the front surface of the feet and should be. (If the bottom plan view was not part of the originally filed drawings, then the Examiner would be issuing a Sec. 112 rejection instead of merely an objection since there’s not enough information to understand the shape of the feet and the feet will have to be disclaimed by converting them to broken lines.) Objections to the drawings are usually easy to overcome, but they still must be overcome by submitting replacement sheets. This decreases the efficiency of your operation and increases client costs, so objections are important to minimize by carefully reviewing your drawings before submission.

Advising a Department Store on Its Brand Strategy? Get Creative or Go the Way of Barneys

Whenever I wanted my grandmother to reveal a deep secret—such as what I was getting for my birthday—she would reply by asking, “Does Gimbels tell Macy’s?” That was when the Gimbels and Macy’s department stores battled for market share like colossi astride Herald Square. Gimbels is long gone from the New York metropolitan area retail market—as are, from all levels of pricing—Alexander’s, B. Altman and Company, Bamberger’s, Bonwit Teller, Galleries Lafayette, E. J. Korvette, the Lord & Taylor flagship on Fifth Avenue, Stern’s, Takashimaya, and Two Guys, among others. And to that list we can now add Barneys. As I never tire of advising our clients, trademarks are the awards that the law bestows upon a well-operated brand, and brand—in fashion and luxury, and in retailing of all but the most elemental variety—is about story. That is, the brand has to tell a story that is clear and identifiable to the customer—a story so compelling that he or she will elect to participate in it by making purchases. Enter an Hermès and you are sharing in a gentrified vision of France as authentic to the XVIe arrondissement as to a canter on horseback through the fields of the Loire. Walk down the block to Salvatore Ferragamo and inhabit that world of Florentine grace and worldliness that has guided the West since the Renaissance. Maintaining a distinct brand image is often challenging for a manufacturer/design company, especially if it operates its own boutiques. But it can by even more demanding for a large, multi-brand retailer, especially now. 

CAFC Finds Columbia Patent Claims Invalid, Reverses Infringement Verdict

On November 13, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) heard an appeal from the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California in the case of Columbia Sportswear North America, Inc. v. Seirus Innovative Accessories, Inc. (Seirus). Columbia appealed the judgment from a jury trial holding claims 2 and 23 of U.S. Patent 8,453,270 (the ‘270 patent) invalid as anticipated and obvious. Seirus cross-appealed from a grant of summary judgment by the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon, holding tSeirushat Seirus infringed U.S. Design Patent No. D657,093 (the ‘093 patent). The CAFC affirmed that claims 2 and 23 of the ‘270 patent were invalid, reversed the summary judgment decision against Seirus for infringement of the ‘093 patent and remanded for further proceedings on the design patent.

IPWatchdog Annual Meeting Now VIRTUAL CON2020

IPWatchdog® CON2020 has gone VIRTUAL!   The IPWatchdog® Virtual CON2020 will endeavor to address the issues facing innovators, creators and brand owners as they find it increasingly difficult to monetize their proprietary creations in an economy where many large enterprises no longer want to pay for what they choose to implement and/or sell, and there is scant legal recourse to…