Library

Written reference material on design patent practice: stand-alone papers and the Q&A Library of AI answers to practitioner questions. The papers link directly to the underlying file wrappers, Board decisions, and opinions in ProSearch, so a free account lets you open the record behind any citation.

Weekly Updates

Each week we read the prosecution histories of the design patents that issued that Tuesday after at least one rejection, and report the most useful moves applicants and examiners made, with every file wrapper citation linked to ProSearch.

Week of October 6, 2026: Line Weight as Evidence of Possession
466 prosecution histories. A parent application’s line weights saved a one-line claim from new matter, the first allowances under the March 2026 GUI guidance arrived, and an Amazon Seller Support reply moved a reference date by nearly three years.
Week of September 29, 2026: No Declaration Needed
431 prosecution histories. Applicants cleared prior art without the declaration the examiner asked for, through a prior-disclosure statement in the specification, an attack on Amazon’s “Date First Available,” and an inventorship correction.
Week of September 22, 2026: The Review Is Not the Product
285 prosecution histories. A reused Home Depot SKU showed that the oldest review did not date the picture, an inventor’s own listing shielded against third-party registrations published in between, and measurements beat the inventor’s own Instagram post.
Week of September 15, 2026: Analogous Is Not the Same Article
198 prosecution histories. A Board reversal holding that an examiner must answer a different-article argument separately from analogous art, a GUI allowed with no screen drawn under the March 2026 guidance, a domain registration date that sank a web reference, and two continuations that recovered lost priority dates.
Week of September 8, 2026: The Differences the Examiner Skipped
444 prosecution histories. Answering a “so related” obviousness rejection by listing the differences the examiner skipped, with Ex parte Chen behind them, plus an Amazon date beaten with the brand’s archived website and web art that showed only one side of the article.

Papers

Obviousness After LKQ: A Three-Part Series

Three papers examining how design patent examination has changed since LKQ Corp. v. GM Global Technology Operations LLC, 102 F.4th 1280 (Fed. Cir. 2024) (en banc), each built from a corpus of issued file wrappers retrieved through ProSearch.

Analogous Art After LKQ: What the Examination Record Shows and What Practitioners Might Consider
How examiners and applicants are handling the analogous art requirement for primary and secondary references, drawn from an 84-file corpus.
The Reason to Combine After LKQ: What the Examination Record Shows and What Practitioners Might Consider
What the record shows about the motivation to modify a primary reference with a secondary one, drawn from a 171-file corpus.
Secondary Considerations After LKQ: What the Examination Record Shows and What Practitioners Might Consider
How objective indicia are being argued and weighed in design examination, drawn from a 113-file corpus.

Functionality

Functionality in Design Patent Law
A full treatment of the functionality doctrine in validity, claim construction, and infringement, from Gorham through Sport Dimension, Ethicon, Lanard, and the 2025 and 2026 decisions, with every citation linked to the underlying opinion or record in ProSearch.

Infringement

From “Substantially the Same” to “Substantially Similar” and “Plainly Dissimilar”: How the Design Patent Infringement Standard Drifted from Gorham
Traces the substitution of “substantially similar” and “plainly dissimilar” for Gorham’s “substantially the same” through more than a century of decisions to the 2026 denial of rehearing en banc in Range of Motion and the Federal Circuit’s decision in Jacki Easlick, with its citations linked to the underlying opinions and records in ProSearch.

Prosecution

Appendices in U.S. Design Patent Applications: Uses, Risks, and What the Prosecution Record Shows
Examines why practitioners file appendices with design applications, how examiners have treated them in actual file histories, when appendix images can support amendments and priority, and the estoppel, disclaimer and dedication arguments an appendix may invite, with its citations linked to the underlying applications, opinions and MPEP sections in ProSearch.

ProGuides

Design Patent ProGuide – Titles
A practice guide to design patent titles: the rules and examination guidance, more than forty prosecution-history examples of title objections and how they were resolved, and the enforcement consequences of title choice after Curver, SurgiSil and LKQ, with its citations linked to the underlying applications, opinions and MPEP sections in ProSearch.
Design Patent ProGuide – Broken Line Statements
A practice guide to broken line statements: the MPEP guidance and practice rules, more than forty prosecution-history examples of broken line objections and rejections and how they were resolved, and the enforcement consequences of broken-line amendments after Owens and Pacific Coast, with its citations linked to the underlying applications, opinions and MPEP sections in ProSearch.
Design Patent ProGuide – Appendices
A practice guide to appendices in design applications: the MPEP guidance and recommended form, prosecution-history examples of appendix objections, rejections and cancellations and how they were resolved, appendix support for amendments and continuations, and the estoppel, disclaimer and dedication risks of appendix use, with its citations linked to the underlying applications, opinions and MPEP sections in ProSearch.
Design Patent ProGuide – Claims
A practice guide to the design patent claim: the required form, the rules and examination guidance tiered by how firmly examiners apply them, prosecution-history examples of claim objections and rejections and how they were resolved, and the enforcement consequences of the article named in the claim after Curver and SurgiSil, with its citations linked to the underlying applications, opinions and MPEP sections in ProSearch.
Design Patent ProGuide – Figure Descriptions
A practice guide to figure descriptions: recommended view terminology, the rules tiered by how firmly examiners apply them, prosecution-history examples of figure-description objections and how they were resolved, and practice notes, with its citations linked to the underlying applications, MPEP sections and rules in ProSearch.
Design Patent ProGuide – Declarations Under 1.130(a)
A practice guide to declarations of attribution under 37 C.F.R. § 1.130(a): what the rule requires, a sample declaration and checklist, eighteen prosecution histories showing why examiners found declarations insufficient and what corrected them, and a survey of twenty more files from twenty examiners, with its citations linked to the underlying applications, opinions and MPEP form paragraphs in ProSearch.

Q&A Library

Unedited AI answers to practitioner questions about design patent prosecution and litigation, each generated by ProSearch AI from the documents in the ProSearch corpus, with links to the source records.

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