U.S. Design Patent No. D612,768 issued on March 30, 2010 to Fisker Automotive, Inc. of Irvine CA, discloses a design for an automotive exterior.
The patent includes a number of figures which show the exterior design for an automobile in various views and perspectives. The design appears to be that of the 2010 Fisker Karma, which the company touts as “the world’s first luxury plug-in hybrid electric vehicle.” Fisker Automotive is a joint venture partnership between Fisker Coachbuild, LLC and Quantum Fuel Systems Technologies Worldwide, Inc. According to the company’s website, Fisker Coachbuild provides design services while Quantum provides the technological advances. The company’s website describes the Karma technology as being “cutting-edge plug-in hybrid technology” in which “a small gasoline engine [] turns the generator, which charges the lithium ion battery pack, powering the electric motor and turning the rear wheels.”
A search of the USPTO database for “Fisker” finds the ’768 design patent as the sole U.S. patent issued to Fisker Automotive to date. A search for “Quantum Fuel” finds four U.S. patents which have issued since 2003, directed to hydrogen storage systems, gas storage tanks, etc. From this brief search, I didn’t see an issued U.S. patent or U.S. published patent application that appeared to be directed to the technology of the Karma as described on the company’s website.
The ’768 design patent provides a good opportunity to discuss the difference between “utility patents” and “design patents.” All the patents previously discussed in the OC TechInnovation™ blog are utility patents. Such patents protect the technologically useful or functional aspects of an invention, including the particular features which provide the invention’s improved performance, reliability, cost of manufacturing, etc. In a utility patent, the scope of protection is defined by the one or more claims at the end of the patent, which generally describe the invention in terms of its features. The figures of a utility patent only serve to help interpret the claims (e.g., by providing examples of the invention and/or its features).
However, design patents, such as the ’768 design patent, differ significantly from utility patents. While a utility patent protects the functional aspects of an invention, a design patent only protects the ornamental, or non-functional, appearance of the design. For example, the ’768 patent only provides protection for the appearance of the exterior design (e.g., its shape, configuration, surface ornamentation), not for any functional aspects. Since the design patent’s protection is limited to ornamental aspects, the figures of the design patent are paramount in determining the scope of protection. Instead of relying on the claim language to define the invention as does a utility patent, the design patent includes a single claim which claims protection for the design “as shown and described” in the figures.
In general, an article of manufacture may possess both functional and ornamental characteristics, so both utility and design patent protection may be available. A design patent only has a maximum term of 14 years from the date of issuance, while a utility patent has a maximum term of 20 years from the earliest priority date.
While generally the costs and time involved in obtaining a U.S. design patent are significantly less than for obtaining a U.S. utility patent, the scope of protection provided by a design patent is generally considered to be more narrow than that of a utility patent. Relatively small changes of the ornamental appearance of a design can be enough to avoid infringement of a design patent. In contrast, more substantial changes of the functional aspects of an invention (e.g., removing one or more features listed in the claims) are generally needed to avoid infringement of a utility patent.
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