For technology companies navigating the increasingly hostile terrain of software utility patent protection and Section 101 rejections, design patents have quietly become a more strategically important tools in the IP toolkit. Now, the USPTO has issued significant new supplemental guidance that makes design patent protection for computer-generated icons, graphical user interfaces (GUIs), and even projected and holographic interfaces dramatically more accessible. The updated supplemental guidance provides design patent applicants with more flexibility in choosing how to present a new, original, and ornamental designs for a computer-generated interface or icon. This development underscores the need for this type of design patent to be considered as part of an overall IP protection strategy.
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