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
A total of 926 Design Patents issued on June 24, 2025. Unpublished PTAB Decisions One application (29798750) has an unpublished PTAB decision (Ex Parte Chen, 2024-000640) reversing the Examiner on an issue of obviousness with an LKQ analysis. Ex Parte Chen is another good example of an applicant overcoming an
In LKQ Corp. v. GM Global Technology Operations LLC, 102 F.4th 1280 (Fed. Cir. 2024), the Federal Circuit fundamentally reshaped design patent obviousness law. LKQ successfully argued that the long-standing Rosen-Durling test, which required a primary reference to be “basically the same” as the claimed design, was too restrictive and prevented proper application of traditional