Amazing Grace Periods for Registered Designs and Design Patents: A Sweet Sound or a Funeral Toll?

With the rise of the global economy, obtaining design protection for innovative product designs has become more complex than ever. In the past, a designer might only seek protection where it sold its goods, whereas today designers are also looking for protection in the places where the goods are manufactured. To complicate matters further, many of these countries may have different or developing design protection systems. In short, applicants are now looking to file for design protection in places where they may not have sought protection in the past and find themselves confronting a tangled web of conflicting and varying design laws. This article explores one such conflict—the 'grace period'—and its impact on the acquisition of design rights internationally. In this article, Finnegan attorneys Elizabeth D. Ferrill and Jeanette M. Roorda discuss grace periods for design patents.