New act expands design-patent rights

On December 19, 2012, President Barack Obama signed the Patent Law Treaties Implementation Act, which is expected to take effect at the end of this year. The act implements provisions of two treaties previously ratified by the Senate: the Geneva Act of the Hague Agreement Concerning the International Registration of Industrial Designs and the Patent Law Treaty. The new act also represents legislative acknowledgement and an attempted response to an ever increasing globalization of technologies and commerce, and the challenges of protecting valuable intellectual property. More pointedly, the act recognizes the increasing significance of worldwide protection of product designs.

Design patents can be an important weapon in the worldwide intellectual property arsenal of innovators. They can provide an effective complement to utility patents to provide an additional layer of protection. Indeed, for those product categories in which aesthetics are a primary driver, design patents may provide a primary source of protection. However, until now, an inventor’s ability effectively to develop a strategy inclusive of a multijurisdictional design-patent component was hampered by irreconcilable procedural inconsistencies. Innovators desperately needed a procedural mechanism that provided a harmonized approach to international design protection.