Design Patent in the United States

Plain-English Law

Design Patent as defined by Nolo’s Encyclopedia of Everyday Law (p. 437-455): A patent issued on a new design, used for purely aesthetic reasons that does not affect the functioning of the underlying device.

Designs

The following information about Patents, and the Patent System. is from the Cyclopaedia of Political Science, Political Economy, and the Political History of the United States by the Best American and European Writers (1899):

Section 4929 of the Revised Statutes provides that “any person who by his own industry, genius, efforts and expense has invented and produced any new and original design for a manufacture, bust, statue, alto-relievo, or bas-relief; any new and original design for the printing of woolen, silk, cotton or other fabrics; any new and original impression, ornament, pattern, print or picture to be printed, painted, cast, or otherwise placed on or worked into any article of manufacture; or any new, useful and original shape or configuration of any article of manufacture, the same not having been known or used by others before his invention or production thereof, or patented or described in any printed publication, may, upon payment of the fees prescribed, and other due proceedings had, the same as in cases of inventions or discoveries, obtain a patent therefor.” The term for which these patents are issued is either three and a half, seven or fourteen years, and the fees are, respectively, ten, fifteen and thirty dollars.