Egyptian Goddess, Inc. et al. v. SWISA, Inc. et al.: Appropriate Legal Standard for Assessing Claims of Design Patent Infringement

The Federal Circuit Court of Appeals has today (9/22/08) addressed the appropriate legal standard to be used in assessing claims of design patent infringement.

The questions asked by the en banc panel are:

"...whether the “point of novelty” test should continue to be used as a test for infringement of a design patent; whether the court should adopt the “non-trivial advance test” as a means of determining whether a particular design feature qualifies as a point of novelty; how the point of novelty test should be administered, particularly when numerous features of the design differ from certain prior art designs; and whether district courts should perform formal claim construction in design patent cases."

Find the Court's answer to these questions here.

Nancy

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