Saidman DesignLaw Group partners Perry Saidman and George Raynal participated in multiple design law activities that took place April 23 – 26, 2018 in Arlington and Alexandria VA. The activities included the first-ever Design Law Boot Camp, put on by the American Intellectual Property Law Association (AIPLA), Examiner Afternoon at the the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), USPTO Design Day 2018, and the annual IPO-USPTO stakeholder meeting.
On April 25, 2018, the USPTO hosted and co-sponsored Design Day 2018. The program theme – Design at Work – covered a broad range of design patent topics, from application filing and prosecution to validity, enforcement, infringement, and damages, with insight from designers, businesses, attorneys and USPTO officials. Five SDLG attorneys attended this event. George was on the program and presented a statistical overview and summary of recent design patent decisions arising from USPTO proceedings, e.g., Post Grant Review, Inter Partes Review, Reexamination, and the like. Our full report from Design Day 2018 is available here.
Earlier in the week, Perry gave the opening keynote address for the inaugural AIPLA Design Law Boot Camp which ran over two days. He presented on the fundamentals of Design Patents, Copyrights and Trade Dress.
Design Day 2018 was also preceded by a presentation to design patent examiners organized by Charles Mauro of MauroNewMedia. The examiners were treated to an enactment of a client counseling session, which provided true-to-life experience of the complicated pathways of product and software design, development and IP protection. George then made a presentation of the latest developments in district court litigation and matters before the PTAB, including validity challenges (addressing issues of priority, written description, ornamentality and prior art rejections), claim construction, amendment during prosecution and claim scope, and the impact of the Supreme Court’s decision in Star Athletica v. Varsity Brands on copyright protection for useful articles.
Following Design Day, Perry and George participated in the IPO-USPTO stakeholder meeting, where members of the IPO Industrial Design Committee met with USPTO officials, including Group 2900 Director Karen Young and Supervisory Primary Examiners, to discuss significant design patent examination issues such as title objections, obviousness rejections, intended use statements, patent printing issues, and more.