In re SurgiSil LLP, [2020-1940] (October 4, 2021), the Federal Circuit reversed the Patent Trial and Appeal Board’s decision affirming an examiner’s rejection of SurgiSil’s design patent application, No. 29/491,550 an “ornamental design for a lip implant as shown and described.”

The examiner rejected the sole claim of the application as anticipated by an art tool called a stump, shown in a Dick Blick catalog (Blick):

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The Board rejected SurgiSil’s argument that Blick could not anticipate because it disclosed a “very different” article of manufacture than a lip implant, reasoning that it is appropriate to ignore the identification of the article of manufacture in the claim language, because whether a reference is analogous art is irrelevant to whether that reference anticipates.

The Federal Circuit said that a design claim is limited to the article of manufacture
identified in the claim; it does not broadly cover a design in the abstract. The Federal Circuit noted that in Curver Luxembourg, SARL v. Home Expressions Inc., 938 F.3d 1334, 1336 (Fed. Cir. 2019), it held that the design patent was limited to the particular article of manufacture
identified in the claim, i.e., a chair, and not other furniture.

The Federal Circuit noted that the claim identified a lip implant, and the Board found
that the application’s figure depicts a lip implant. As such, the claim is limited to lip implants and does not cover other articles of manufacture. There is no dispute that Blick discloses an art tool rather than a lip implant, so the Board’s anticipation finding therefore rested on an erroneous interpretation of the claim’s scope. Thus the Federal Circuit reversed the rejection of the claim.

As a result, a carefully selected title may allow a designer to get a patent where the design is similar to the designs for other types of protects. What’s in a name? Patentability.