US Design Patent Law: A Historical Look at the Design Patent/Copyright Interface
Jason J. Du Mont, Mark D. Janis · Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2018
Under modern U.S. law, concurrent copyright and design patent protection for a given design is permissible; no election between regimes is required. The goal of this chapter is to explain how U.S. law arrived at this point, specifically by asking how design patent law has demarcated its protectable subject matter over the course of its lengthy history, and by looking outwards from the perspective of design patent law to observe how U.S. copyright law has evolved over that same time period.