Partner Mauricio Uribe authored an article on leveraging design patent protection, which was published in IAM. The article discusses how companies can best leverage design patent protection to achieve a maximum advantage and the “the business value gained by having a competitor incur business costs and delays to work-around a patented design”.
Uribe begins by providing a summary of patent protection as an exclusionary right, and then explains how to gain advantages with design patents, saying “there can be business advantages to being able to prevent or delay the development or release of unlicensed competitive products in view a protected design. Similarly, there can be business advantages to forcing competitors to invest in resources to avoid copying the protected design. Such business advantages do not necessarily require or result in litigation involving design patents, and can yield significant gains relative to the costs of filing and prosecuting design patents in the United States.”
Uribe provides two strategies for maximizing design patent gains: “file early” and “file often.”
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