Some products have attractive non-functional appearance features that need to be protected. If these attractive features are novel and non-obvious, filing a Design Patent Application that focuses on important attractive features while ignoring features of lesser importance can provide the broad patent protection you want. Because a Design Patent Application can protect a selected portion of an article of manufacture, it is possible to file a plurality of Design Patent Applications each protecting a different appearance feature or a different set of appearance features -- so each resulting Design Patent will provide broad patent protection of a different scope. See, for example, the drawing figures shown in the right column of the Patent & Trademark Drawings page of this web site -- each of which appears in a different Design Patent. Simple products such as wire-formed racks that not only are functional but also have a decorative appearance can be far more economically protected by filing a Design Patent Application than by filing for Utility Patent protection. The Issue Fee one must pay to the USPTO to secure a Design Patent from a Design Patent Application is about half the dollar amount of the Issue Fee one must pay to the USPTO to obtain a Utility Patent from a Utility Patent Application. A Design Patent obtained by filing a Design Patent Application requires the payment of no Maintenance Fees to keep it in force for its 14-year term. A Utility Patent, on the other hand, requires the payment of Maintenance Fees at 3.5, 7.5 and 11.5 years from its issue date -- Maintenance Fees that may total more than $7500 (half this amount if you qualify as a "small entity"). |