Every reference in a design patent obviousness rejection must now be analogous art to the claimed design. LKQ v. GM, 102 F.4th 1280, 1296-99 (Fed. Cir. 2024) (en banc).
An obviousness rejection of a design claim now requires a record-supported reason to combine the references. See LKQ v. GM, 102 F.4th 1280, 1299 (Fed. Cir. 2024) (en banc).
Of the 198 design patents that issued on September 15, 2026 after a rejection, one drew a Board reversal holding that an examiner must answer a different-article argument separately from analogous art. Also this week: a GUI allowed with no screen drawn under the March 2026 guidance, a domain registration
Of the 444 design patents that issued on September 8, 2026, one shows how to answer an obviousness rejection built on the “so related” sentence: list the differences the examiner skipped, with Ex parte Chen behind them. Also this week: an Amazon date beaten with the brand’s archived website, web
In LKQ v. GM the en banc Federal Circuit discarded the rigid two-part test that had governed design patent obviousness since the early 1980s and replaced it with the Graham factors adapted for design patents. The inquiry is more flexible now, and challengers are already testing it, but as the