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.
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.
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.
Recent Posts
- Secondary Considerations After LKQ: What the Examination Record Shows and What Practitioners Might Consider
- Analogous Art After LKQ: What the Examination Record Shows and What Practitioners Might Consider
- The Reason to Combine After LKQ: What the Examination Record Shows and What Practitioners Might Consider
- Obviousness after LKQ v. GM
- The Title after Curver Luxembourg v. Home Expressions
- Prosecution History Disclaimer after Top Brand v. Cozy Comfort
- Can Visual Similarity Between References Still Provide a Motivation to Combine?
- Common rejections in design patent reissue applications