March 23, 2025 • 15 mins
Ornamental or functional? That's the critical question at the heart of design patent protection, and one that can make or break your intellectual property strategy. In this enlightening conversation with patent attorney Mario Milano, we unpack the often misunderstood world of design patents and how they differ from their utility patent counterparts.
Mario expertly guides us through the legal landscape, explaining how courts determine whether a product feature deserves design patent protection. Using real-world examples like the famous Traffics case (those springy construction signs you've driven past) and insights from Ethicon Endosurgery v. Covidien litigation, he demonstrates how seemingly subtle distinctions between ornamental and functional elements have profound legal consequences. His strategic advice on submitting multiple design embodiments reveals how expert patent practitioners think defensively to create comprehensive protection.
The conversation explores how different industries leverage design patents - from hardware manufacturers navigating standardized components to fashion designers protecting aesthetic choices, and even mature industries like bicycles where functional innovations are increasingly rare but design opportunities remain plentiful. Mario's practical tips on using professional draftsmen, maintaining confidentiality before filing, and understanding the 17-year protection period without maintenance fees provide invaluable guidance for creators and businesses. Whether you're developing consumer electronics, industrial equipment, or fashion items, this episode delivers essential insights for protecting what makes your products visually unique in the marketplace. Have questions about your own intellectual property needs? Remember that Mario offers free consultations to help determine the best protection strategy for your innovations.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to the Secure your Creations podcast with
Mario Milano Today.
In this episode, we're going tobe talking about design patents
, and there's a lot ofintricacies, would you say,
Mario, in terms of designpatents.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Yeah, the design patents are a unique aspect of
patent law and so there's a lotof ins and outs, a lot of ways
that people sometimes gettripped up or might not be
familiar with some of patent law, and so there's a lot of ins
and outs, a lot of ways thatpeople sometimes get tripped up
or might not be familiar withsome of the details.
So hopefully we can dispel someof the myths that are out there
.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
Awesome, awesome.
So let's start right from thedoor, right?
So obviously you do this for aliving.
You're good at it.
So I'm going to ask you thesimplicity design patent and a
utility patent's what's thedifference?
Speaker 2 (00:44):
yeah, so there is a big difference between the two
of them.
The design patent is going tocover the ornamental features of
a product or an invention.
Uh well, the utility patentwill cover the functionality of
the product, and so you knowthere is some gray areas.
Where is something functional?
Is it a design?
Um, and that's something thatyour experienced practitioner
(01:07):
would be able to recommend andadvise you on how to proceed
about that.
But if it's the look andcommercial impression of
something, that would be adesign patent, and if it's the
functionality, that would be autility patent.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
That makes sense.
So also let's describe theornamentally.
Ornamental make sure I'm sayingthat right ornamental and fun
functionality.
That's a lot of alities anditties.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
Yeah, they like to keep it pretty difficult to
pronounce, but you know this.
Underlying concepts are prettysimple Ornamentality and is just
.
You know the way that somethinglooks.
Think about if you had aT-shirt.
Where do you put the buttons onit?
You know buttons themselves aregoing to be functional because
they're going to help keep theshirt closed, but you know where
(01:57):
are they positioned on theshirt?
What do the buttons look like?
You know you could have roundbuttons, you could have square
buttons, stars.
You know the possibilities forthe shapes are endless.
No-transcript.
(02:27):
So, have you have, you have.
Do you have a real life examplethat we can kind of cut to here
to get people to understand thedifferences a little bit more
concretely?
A real life example?
So I don't have any images withme, but one famous case that
gets cited is the Traffics case.
And so there, you've probablyseen these signs when they're
doing construction and you seeit's like a road sign and on the
base it has some springs, andso they tried to protect those
(02:49):
springs with a design patent.
But ultimately the court saidthat, look, those springs are
functional because they keep thesign from blowing over.
Give it some, you know, eventhough it's rigid, if something
hits it or if the wind blows toohard, it allows the sign to,
you know, withstand some ofthose forces.
And so ultimately that wasdecided to be something that's
(03:09):
functional, and so the designpatent was helped.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
The was not upheld.
Well, that's interestingbecause I I noticed it in
driving by.
You know that I was like, whyis that thing of springs on it?
Never really thought.
But now, as you bring it upfrom a from a patent perspective
, that's pretty cool actually.
Yeah, it's.
It's funny how the small littledetails that are patented
really goes to your level ofexpertise in terms of what you
(03:35):
do.
Talk to me about how the courtssee, uh, or ornamental versus
functional designs yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
so courts usually look at uh, you know, are there
alternative ways of doingsomething?
So with that, uh, the trafficcase, you know, was there were
alternative ways of doingsomething.
So with that the traffic case,you know, was there, were there
other things that you could usebesides that spring to be able
to have something that functionsin the same way?
And so if the answer to that isno, that's the only thing that
you could use, well, then youknow that's going to be
considered functional.
(04:04):
If there are other elementsthat could be used, then you
know could be considered.
That is usually considered adesign element, and so you know,
one of the ways that we can dothat is when we file a design
patent application.
Instead of filing it with oneembodiment and one showing or
one set of drawings for yourinvention, Maybe we say, OK,
(04:24):
here's two or three differentways that you can do the same
thing, and so now we have allthese drawings in our
application showing that youknow this isn't functional.
It was just a design choicethat we made and it's for the
ornamentality of it that we wentin this direction, and it's
evidenced by the fact that wealready included all these
alternatives.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
Wow.
So just to make sure that I'munderstanding you correctly,
you're not just saying here'sone idea, this is where everyone
listening, this is whereMario's expertise comes into
play.
It's not just one you'resubmitting, you're submitting
several to make sure you coveryour basis in that long process
of getting approved, exactly.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
Yeah, yeah, that's exactly it.
You know, all these differentalternatives that we can come up
with will certainly help expandthe reach of, you know, your
patent that you're going to getand making sure that your
competitors can't really comeclose to what you're doing.
I mean, ideally, when you'reapplying for your patent
application, you think of, okay,what's the best way for me to
do what I'm doing and file apatent application on that?
(05:23):
And then think to yourself okay, if somebody already had a
patent on this idea, what aresome ways that I would try to
get around it?
And, you know, come up withthree, four or five ideas and
then we can include all of thosein the application to make sure
that we really cast a wide netwith the patent.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
And that consultation is very important.
It's important to get in theearly, for you to get in early
so you can really kind ofnurture them through the process
of understanding.
Here's kind of what the courtsthink and you really should be
prepared for that.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
And one of the things that Isee with people who may not be
familiar with the patent processyou know they have this
commercial embodiment thatthey've perfected.
They spend time.
You know they've made it asreliable as they can for as
relatively inexpensive as theycan.
You know you want to make itefficiently, and so they think,
well, you know, I have theseother concepts, but you know
(06:13):
they don't look as good, theydon't function as well, they're
more expensive to manufacture,and so they think, well, we
shouldn't include that becauseit's not as good of a product.
But really, those are the exactthings that we do want to
include in there, just to makesure that we can get things as
wide as we can.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
Wow, good advice, good advice.
So I'm going to mess up somewords here again and you're
going to hopefully help me.
The Ethicon endosurgery versusCoviden court case.
Tell me a little bit about that.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
Yeah, that was a case where we had a design patent at
issue and the court was lookingat whether something was
functional or whether it wasornamental, and so that was the
case where the courts reallyconsidered, okay, is there
another way that something couldbe done?
And so they, um, when lookingat the design, they ultimately
(07:04):
uh, decided that you know, ifsomething, if there's only one
way to do something, then that'sgoing to be considered
functional, but if there'salternatives, then that'll be
ornamental.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
Wow, there's a lot to this.
I'm not going to lie to you.
There's a lot to it.
So tell me about this.
Consumer recognition how oftendoes the consumer recognizing a
product help or hurt the designpatent production?
Speaker 2 (07:32):
Yeah, so for the design patent, the infringement
test is a little bit different.
So consumer recognition issomething that we would probably
look to more for a trademark.
And then, so you know, you'restarting to think about, like
you know, the Pepsi logo.
If you saw another soda canwith a logo that looked pretty
(07:53):
similar to Pepsi's, then it's aquestion of, okay, what would an
ordinary consumer think?
Would they mistakenly believethat this imposter soda came
from Pepsi?
If so, then that would betrademark infringement.
In design patents we look at,okay, if somebody had these
references and they knew aboutthem and they knew who was
responsible for manufacturingeach, and then they compare the
(08:17):
two designs, would they thinkthat they both came from the
same manufacturer?
And so, uh, the when we'retalking about a design patent
infringement, you know it's morethe uh consumer, it's an
ordinary consumer, uh, and youknow the amount of knowledge
that they have is considered tobe greater in design patent
(08:37):
infringement than in trademarkinfringement.
Um, but you know, ultimately itcomes down to if you're looking
at these two things, would youthink that they came from the
same manufacturer or would youthink that they're the same?
Speaker 1 (08:48):
uh, and if, if you think that they're the same,
then you know that's going to beinfringement okay, so I'm going
to take our two.
I'm going to take our two wordshere ornamentality and
functionality.
And which industries if you canmaybe give a brief list or a
long list, depending on what youknow which industries are
affected by those two differentconcepts?
Speaker 2 (09:08):
Yeah, so a lot of hardware manufacturers.
They're pretty impacted by this, because if you have a bracket
and you need to mount your TV toa bracket, or you have those
holes on the back of your TVthat are industry standard now,
and so if you want to make abracket that mounts to that,
(09:28):
you're going to have to haveyour holes in the correct place.
And so if one person was ableto file a design patent just
claiming the position of thoseholes on a mounting bracket,
well then everybody would beinfringing because it's an
industry standard, and if youwant to make it a product that
actually works, you have to havethe holes in that place, and so
that would be consideredfunctional.
But you know, other than theplacement of the holes for the
(09:52):
screws, you know you could have,uh, your metal pieces in an x
pattern, a square, oval,rectangle, octagon.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
You know all that would be considered ornamental
rather than functional so, interms of back to the industry
conversation, what aboutconsumer electronics or fashion?
Even?
How would somebody like afashion or consumer electronics
or an industrial industry beaffected by the design patents?
Speaker 2 (10:18):
Yeah, so fashion industry is one where we really
see design patents are prettyeasy to say that something is
ornamental rather thanfunctional.
Easy to say that something isornamental rather than
functional Because you know ifyou have a zipper, could you do
it with Velcro.
Or you know hook and loopfastener I guess you could call
it Could you do it with a buttonSnaps.
You know there's all thesealternative ways of like closing
(10:39):
things.
So you know whatever elementyou use is usually considered to
be a design element and youknow your uh material that you
select.
There's different materials youcould use.
You know there's really nodifference between wool and
cotton as far as a design patentis concerned, uh, so you know
(11:00):
they would be probably beconsidered equivalents to each
other and then in the like theelectronics, uh, industry.
Um you, it depends on thematerials that you're selecting
and why you're selecting them,as long as there's something
that's equivalent out there.
So, like the shape of yourLaptop we've done design patents
(11:25):
on those the shape of theprinter, the internal workings
of how the printer actuallyworks that's going to be more
utility aspect.
But the outer portion of it,the part that the consumer sees
either when the product issitting on their desk at home or
when they go into the store tobuy it.
That's certainly consideredornamental.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
Wow.
So there's a lot of details interms of the design patents.
Why don't you give everybodyjust a brief overview of, kind
of the industries that you workin more specifically, some of a
bit of your background and howsomeone who may not know that
they need a patent should belooking out for in terms of a
service like yours?
Speaker 2 (12:04):
Yeah, so you know I work in some military products,
medical devices, some garagedoors, vehicles, so you can
imagine that for vehicles, youknow there's plenty of design
patents that we can get there,everybody you know, every time
they come out with a new car oreven they just upgrade the car
design.
(12:25):
You know there's features therethat aren't necessarily
functional and are just for thelooks right.
Every car is going to have fourwheels and a motor and you're
going to be able to sit insideof it.
So the way that the outside ofthe body looks, or even you know
some of the inner workings oflike how does the dashboard look
and things like that, you knowthese are all things that we can
protect with the design patent,things you want to look out for
, so we can protect the designpatent Things you want to look
(12:48):
out for.
If you're in an industry thathas a lot of utility patents and
so you think, well,everything's been done before,
it's going to be hard for us toimprove.
And one of the areas that Ireally see that with is with
bicycles.
Bicycles have been around for along time and so a lot of the
technological improvements thatyou might think are new they've
(13:16):
already been done before.
But you can protect that with adesign patent, and it's almost
helpful when there's a lot ofutility patents in a certain
area, because then you can say,look, there's plenty of
alternatives.
The design that we selected isnot the only way that you could
do it and therefore it's rightfor a design patent.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
Awesome, very awesome .
One last question, let's beforewe close out the show of this
episode or close out thisepisode, can you give us, in
terms of three to five tips thatpeople should know on a basic
level about design patents.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
Yeah, so number one is you're going to have to use a
draftsman.
You know it's not required, butfrom my perspective, yes, it's
absolutely required.
The drawings are really themain disclosure in a design
patent, so you're going to wantto have those done by a
professional rather than tryingto draw it up yourself, much
like with utility patents.
(14:09):
This is number two.
Much like with utility patents,you're going to want to refrain
from publicly disclosing yourdesign until you have your
patent application on file.
Design patents they don't haveany maintenance fees, so once
you get your patent granted, youknow that's it.
You don't have to pay any more.
Money is nice and your patentis good for, uh, 17 years, um,
(14:34):
and uh, you know.
Another thing to remember is uh, if you're looking, you think,
okay, this is a new ornamentalfeature or a design for a
product, even this, even if it'sa product that's been around
for a while, you're improvingthe look of it or the overall
commercial impression, thenthat's something that can be
protected with a design patent.
Speaker 1 (14:51):
Very, very good, very good.
So if anybody who might have aninterest or concern about their
inventions and needconsultation, mario offers a
free consultation, correctthat's right.
Oh, he can help you.
Speaker 2 (15:04):
Yeah, that's right.
Always happy to talk it overand make sure that this is the
best way forward.
Speaker 1 (15:09):
Awesome, and you can find him on milanoipcom.
Mario, thank you for your timetoday and we look forward to
providing you guys moreinformation and intricacies when
it comes to patents, trademarks, trade secrets and copyrights.
I'm Craig, this is Mario, andwe'll talk to you guys next
episode.
Welcome to the Secure your Creations podcast with
Mario Milano Today.
In this episode, we're going tobe talking about design patents
, and there's a lot ofintricacies, would you say,
Mario, in terms of designpatents.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Yeah, the design patents are a unique aspect of
patent law and so there's a lotof ins and outs, a lot of ways
that people sometimes gettripped up or might not be
familiar with some of patent law, and so there's a lot of ins
and outs, a lot of ways thatpeople sometimes get tripped up
or might not be familiar withsome of the details.
So hopefully we can dispel someof the myths that are out there
.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
Awesome, awesome.
So let's start right from thedoor, right?
So obviously you do this for aliving.
You're good at it.
So I'm going to ask you thesimplicity design patent and a
utility patent's what's thedifference?
Speaker 2 (00:44):
yeah, so there is a big difference between the two
of them.
The design patent is going tocover the ornamental features of
a product or an invention.
Uh well, the utility patentwill cover the functionality of
the product, and so you knowthere is some gray areas.
Where is something functional?
Is it a design?
Um, and that's something thatyour experienced practitioner
(01:07):
would be able to recommend andadvise you on how to proceed
about that.
But if it's the look andcommercial impression of
something, that would be adesign patent, and if it's the
functionality, that would be autility patent.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
That makes sense.
So also let's describe theornamentally.
Ornamental make sure I'm sayingthat right ornamental and fun
functionality.
That's a lot of alities anditties.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
Yeah, they like to keep it pretty difficult to
pronounce, but you know this.
Underlying concepts are prettysimple Ornamentality and is just
.
You know the way that somethinglooks.
Think about if you had aT-shirt.
Where do you put the buttons onit?
You know buttons themselves aregoing to be functional because
they're going to help keep theshirt closed, but you know where
(01:57):
are they positioned on theshirt?
What do the buttons look like?
You know you could have roundbuttons, you could have square
buttons, stars.
You know the possibilities forthe shapes are endless.
No-transcript.
(02:27):
So, have you have, you have.
Do you have a real life examplethat we can kind of cut to here
to get people to understand thedifferences a little bit more
concretely?
A real life example?
So I don't have any images withme, but one famous case that
gets cited is the Traffics case.
And so there, you've probablyseen these signs when they're
doing construction and you seeit's like a road sign and on the
base it has some springs, andso they tried to protect those
(02:49):
springs with a design patent.
But ultimately the court saidthat, look, those springs are
functional because they keep thesign from blowing over.
Give it some, you know, eventhough it's rigid, if something
hits it or if the wind blows toohard, it allows the sign to,
you know, withstand some ofthose forces.
And so ultimately that wasdecided to be something that's
(03:09):
functional, and so the designpatent was helped.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
The was not upheld.
Well, that's interestingbecause I I noticed it in
driving by.
You know that I was like, whyis that thing of springs on it?
Never really thought.
But now, as you bring it upfrom a from a patent perspective
, that's pretty cool actually.
Yeah, it's.
It's funny how the small littledetails that are patented
really goes to your level ofexpertise in terms of what you
(03:35):
do.
Talk to me about how the courtssee, uh, or ornamental versus
functional designs yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
so courts usually look at uh, you know, are there
alternative ways of doingsomething?
So with that, uh, the trafficcase, you know, was there were
alternative ways of doingsomething.
So with that the traffic case,you know, was there, were there
other things that you could usebesides that spring to be able
to have something that functionsin the same way?
And so if the answer to that isno, that's the only thing that
you could use, well, then youknow that's going to be
considered functional.
(04:04):
If there are other elementsthat could be used, then you
know could be considered.
That is usually considered adesign element, and so you know,
one of the ways that we can dothat is when we file a design
patent application.
Instead of filing it with oneembodiment and one showing or
one set of drawings for yourinvention, Maybe we say, OK,
(04:24):
here's two or three differentways that you can do the same
thing, and so now we have allthese drawings in our
application showing that youknow this isn't functional.
It was just a design choicethat we made and it's for the
ornamentality of it that we wentin this direction, and it's
evidenced by the fact that wealready included all these
alternatives.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
Wow.
So just to make sure that I'munderstanding you correctly,
you're not just saying here'sone idea, this is where everyone
listening, this is whereMario's expertise comes into
play.
It's not just one you'resubmitting, you're submitting
several to make sure you coveryour basis in that long process
of getting approved, exactly.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
Yeah, yeah, that's exactly it.
You know, all these differentalternatives that we can come up
with will certainly help expandthe reach of, you know, your
patent that you're going to getand making sure that your
competitors can't really comeclose to what you're doing.
I mean, ideally, when you'reapplying for your patent
application, you think of, okay,what's the best way for me to
do what I'm doing and file apatent application on that?
(05:23):
And then think to yourself okay, if somebody already had a
patent on this idea, what aresome ways that I would try to
get around it?
And, you know, come up withthree, four or five ideas and
then we can include all of thosein the application to make sure
that we really cast a wide netwith the patent.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
And that consultation is very important.
It's important to get in theearly, for you to get in early
so you can really kind ofnurture them through the process
of understanding.
Here's kind of what the courtsthink and you really should be
prepared for that.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
And one of the things that Isee with people who may not be
familiar with the patent processyou know they have this
commercial embodiment thatthey've perfected.
They spend time.
You know they've made it asreliable as they can for as
relatively inexpensive as theycan.
You know you want to make itefficiently, and so they think,
well, you know, I have theseother concepts, but you know
(06:13):
they don't look as good, theydon't function as well, they're
more expensive to manufacture,and so they think, well, we
shouldn't include that becauseit's not as good of a product.
But really, those are the exactthings that we do want to
include in there, just to makesure that we can get things as
wide as we can.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
Wow, good advice, good advice.
So I'm going to mess up somewords here again and you're
going to hopefully help me.
The Ethicon endosurgery versusCoviden court case.
Tell me a little bit about that.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
Yeah, that was a case where we had a design patent at
issue and the court was lookingat whether something was
functional or whether it wasornamental, and so that was the
case where the courts reallyconsidered, okay, is there
another way that something couldbe done?
And so they, um, when lookingat the design, they ultimately
(07:04):
uh, decided that you know, ifsomething, if there's only one
way to do something, then that'sgoing to be considered
functional, but if there'salternatives, then that'll be
ornamental.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
Wow, there's a lot to this.
I'm not going to lie to you.
There's a lot to it.
So tell me about this.
Consumer recognition how oftendoes the consumer recognizing a
product help or hurt the designpatent production?
Speaker 2 (07:32):
Yeah, so for the design patent, the infringement
test is a little bit different.
So consumer recognition issomething that we would probably
look to more for a trademark.
And then, so you know, you'restarting to think about, like
you know, the Pepsi logo.
If you saw another soda canwith a logo that looked pretty
(07:53):
similar to Pepsi's, then it's aquestion of, okay, what would an
ordinary consumer think?
Would they mistakenly believethat this imposter soda came
from Pepsi?
If so, then that would betrademark infringement.
In design patents we look at,okay, if somebody had these
references and they knew aboutthem and they knew who was
responsible for manufacturingeach, and then they compare the
(08:17):
two designs, would they thinkthat they both came from the
same manufacturer?
And so, uh, the when we'retalking about a design patent
infringement, you know it's morethe uh consumer, it's an
ordinary consumer, uh, and youknow the amount of knowledge
that they have is considered tobe greater in design patent
(08:37):
infringement than in trademarkinfringement.
Um, but you know, ultimately itcomes down to if you're looking
at these two things, would youthink that they came from the
same manufacturer or would youthink that they're the same?
Speaker 1 (08:48):
uh, and if, if you think that they're the same,
then you know that's going to beinfringement okay, so I'm going
to take our two.
I'm going to take our two wordshere ornamentality and
functionality.
And which industries if you canmaybe give a brief list or a
long list, depending on what youknow which industries are
affected by those two differentconcepts?
Speaker 2 (09:08):
Yeah, so a lot of hardware manufacturers.
They're pretty impacted by this, because if you have a bracket
and you need to mount your TV toa bracket, or you have those
holes on the back of your TVthat are industry standard now,
and so if you want to make abracket that mounts to that,
(09:28):
you're going to have to haveyour holes in the correct place.
And so if one person was ableto file a design patent just
claiming the position of thoseholes on a mounting bracket,
well then everybody would beinfringing because it's an
industry standard, and if youwant to make it a product that
actually works, you have to havethe holes in that place, and so
that would be consideredfunctional.
But you know, other than theplacement of the holes for the
(09:52):
screws, you know you could have,uh, your metal pieces in an x
pattern, a square, oval,rectangle, octagon.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
You know all that would be considered ornamental
rather than functional so, interms of back to the industry
conversation, what aboutconsumer electronics or fashion?
Even?
How would somebody like afashion or consumer electronics
or an industrial industry beaffected by the design patents?
Speaker 2 (10:18):
Yeah, so fashion industry is one where we really
see design patents are prettyeasy to say that something is
ornamental rather thanfunctional.
Easy to say that something isornamental rather than
functional Because you know ifyou have a zipper, could you do
it with Velcro.
Or you know hook and loopfastener I guess you could call
it Could you do it with a buttonSnaps.
You know there's all thesealternative ways of like closing
(10:39):
things.
So you know whatever elementyou use is usually considered to
be a design element and youknow your uh material that you
select.
There's different materials youcould use.
You know there's really nodifference between wool and
cotton as far as a design patentis concerned, uh, so you know
(11:00):
they would be probably beconsidered equivalents to each
other and then in the like theelectronics, uh, industry.
Um you, it depends on thematerials that you're selecting
and why you're selecting them,as long as there's something
that's equivalent out there.
So, like the shape of yourLaptop we've done design patents
(11:25):
on those the shape of theprinter, the internal workings
of how the printer actuallyworks that's going to be more
utility aspect.
But the outer portion of it,the part that the consumer sees
either when the product issitting on their desk at home or
when they go into the store tobuy it.
That's certainly consideredornamental.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
Wow.
So there's a lot of details interms of the design patents.
Why don't you give everybodyjust a brief overview of, kind
of the industries that you workin more specifically, some of a
bit of your background and howsomeone who may not know that
they need a patent should belooking out for in terms of a
service like yours?
Speaker 2 (12:04):
Yeah, so you know I work in some military products,
medical devices, some garagedoors, vehicles, so you can
imagine that for vehicles, youknow there's plenty of design
patents that we can get there,everybody you know, every time
they come out with a new car oreven they just upgrade the car
design.
(12:25):
You know there's features therethat aren't necessarily
functional and are just for thelooks right.
Every car is going to have fourwheels and a motor and you're
going to be able to sit insideof it.
So the way that the outside ofthe body looks, or even you know
some of the inner workings oflike how does the dashboard look
and things like that, you knowthese are all things that we can
protect with the design patent,things you want to look out for
, so we can protect the designpatent Things you want to look
(12:48):
out for.
If you're in an industry thathas a lot of utility patents and
so you think, well,everything's been done before,
it's going to be hard for us toimprove.
And one of the areas that Ireally see that with is with
bicycles.
Bicycles have been around for along time and so a lot of the
technological improvements thatyou might think are new they've
(13:16):
already been done before.
But you can protect that with adesign patent, and it's almost
helpful when there's a lot ofutility patents in a certain
area, because then you can say,look, there's plenty of
alternatives.
The design that we selected isnot the only way that you could
do it and therefore it's rightfor a design patent.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
Awesome, very awesome .
One last question, let's beforewe close out the show of this
episode or close out thisepisode, can you give us, in
terms of three to five tips thatpeople should know on a basic
level about design patents.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
Yeah, so number one is you're going to have to use a
draftsman.
You know it's not required, butfrom my perspective, yes, it's
absolutely required.
The drawings are really themain disclosure in a design
patent, so you're going to wantto have those done by a
professional rather than tryingto draw it up yourself, much
like with utility patents.
(14:09):
This is number two.
Much like with utility patents,you're going to want to refrain
from publicly disclosing yourdesign until you have your
patent application on file.
Design patents they don't haveany maintenance fees, so once
you get your patent granted, youknow that's it.
You don't have to pay any more.
Money is nice and your patentis good for, uh, 17 years, um,
(14:34):
and uh, you know.
Another thing to remember is uh, if you're looking, you think,
okay, this is a new ornamentalfeature or a design for a
product, even this, even if it'sa product that's been around
for a while, you're improvingthe look of it or the overall
commercial impression, thenthat's something that can be
protected with a design patent.
Speaker 1 (14:51):
Very, very good, very good.
So if anybody who might have aninterest or concern about their
inventions and needconsultation, mario offers a
free consultation, correctthat's right.
Oh, he can help you.
Speaker 2 (15:04):
Yeah, that's right.
Always happy to talk it overand make sure that this is the
best way forward.
Speaker 1 (15:09):
Awesome, and you can find him on milanoipcom.
Mario, thank you for your timetoday and we look forward to
providing you guys moreinformation and intricacies when
it comes to patents, trademarks, trade secrets and copyrights.
I'm Craig, this is Mario, andwe'll talk to you guys next
episode.
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