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17 Stan. Tech. L. Rev. 1 (2013-2014)

handle is hein.journals/stantlr17 and id is 1 raw text is: PROGRESS AND COMPETITION IN DESIGN Mark P. McKenna* Katherine J. Strandburg** CITE AS: 17 STAN. TECH. L. REv. 1 (2013) http://stlr.stanford.edu/progressandcompetition.pdf ABSTRACT This Article argues that applying patent-like doctrine to design makes sense only for a design patent system premised on a patent-like conception of cumulative progress that permits patent examiners and courts to assess whether a novel design reflects a nonobvious step beyond the prior art. If there is a meaningful way to speak of such an inventive step in design, then design patent doctrine should be based on that conception. But if nonobviousness has no sensible meaning in design, then a patent system cannot work for design. At present, design patent doctrine is in disarray because it is unmoored from any conceptual underpinnings. Design patents are not needed to incentivize technological innovation, because that kind of innovation is the subject of utility patent law. Because aesthetic expression is not susceptible of an Inventive step judgment, progress in aesthetic expression is not appropriately incentivized by a patent-like system. Indeed, copyright long has rejected the very possibility of incentivizing aesthetic progress with a creative step requirement because it has found no metric along which to measure aesthetic progress. If there is any type of cumulative progress to be sought in design it must therefore involve the interplay between aesthetics and utilitarian function. Aesthetics and utility intersect at the integration ofform and function and that, we argue, is where design patents must be justified, if they can be justified at all. Once stated, this point is intuitively appealing. The integration of form and function is what distinguishes industrial design both from purely artistic expression (for which we have copyright) and from technological invention (for which we have utility patent). The converse also follows: if there is no workable means to assess the nonobviousness of a given design 's integration ofform and * Associate Dean for Faculty Development, Professor of Law, and Notre Dame Presidential Fellow, Notre Dame Law School. Professor McKenna thanks Rachael Nave for her excellent research assistance. ** Alfred B. Engelberg Professor of Law, New York University School of Law. Professor Strandburg acknowledges the generous support of the Filomen D'Agostino and Max E. Greenberg Research Fund.

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