Iconography

It is pretty well known that icons can be protected with design patents, however we continue to adhere to the fiction that it is not the icon we are protecting, but the substrate decorated with the icon that we are protection.  U.S. Patent No. D697,530 illustrates one technique for protecting an icon that could appear on both a computer display and a printed display:

icon

 

The icon on the computer screen is simply shown with a dashed border separating the icon from the rest of the screen, which is not depicted.  The icon on the printed matter is shown within its own border, and with a slightly different dashed border separating the icon form the rest of the printed material on which it is depicted.