Design Patents At Stanford Law School

Design patent law is suddenly hot, hot, hot!  I have previously published an experimental study of design patents entitled "Beauty Fades: An Experimental Study of Federal Court Design Patent Aesthetics" (available free here).  The ongoing intellectual property litigation between Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronics Company, Ltd. involves, among other legal issues, numerous design patents claiming computer-generated imagery.  Stanford Law School is holding a two day conference on design patent law, called Design Patents in the Modern World, on April 5th and 6th, 2013.  I have been invited to present my research on April 6th as part of The Design Patent Conference Academic Day.  My talk is entitled “(R)evolution in Design Patent Subject Matter:  The Shifting Meaning of ‘Article of Manufacture,’” and is based on an eponymous article my co-author, William J. Seymour, of the Cambridge, Massaschusetts, intellectual property law firm, Lando & Anastasi, LLP, and I are writing.  Bill is a leading authority on design patent law, and his blog, The Ordinary Observer, heads the field.  The ordinary observer will find the conference designed to be replete with new, original, and ornamentally-manufactured articles.