I had very little knowledge of design patents before reading Michael Hages' The Design of Design Patents originally published at Core77.com. I found the collection of articles incredibly informative, and surprisingly easy to understand and follow. Although I started to get a bit lost when he discussed the narrow to broad patent application strategy, I could certainly understand his theories for why design patents are taken for-granted, and how they can be restored to a useful place. I thought Hages' four questions to help designers communicate better with lawyers were a great distillation of the discussion, and were actually useful for a designer to sit and think about for any particular design - whether applying for a patent or not. Had I decided to apply for a patent, I most likely would have started just as the author hypothesized, by trying to read through nearly incomprehensible patent rules. This was a fantastic article that any would-be inventor or entrepreneur should read.
As far as my Gluten-Free Goodness project is concerned, I've spent the week preparing for Friday's test run. I have laid out a protocol for the restaurant staff, made some revisions to the table tents and order cards, pre-written social media blasts to run on Wednesday - Friday, and designed a brief survey which is all ready to go in Survey Monkey and will be used to supplement in-person feedback I receive on the day of testing. Let's hope those gluten-free Morgantonians come out in hoards!
I'm glad you found the article of interest. We may not have enough time to discuss it in class beyond whatever Dave had to offer on the topic, but I hope to come back to it after Thanksgiving. I'm sure the class will have a number of questions about patents.
ReplyDeleteIt sounds like you're all set for Friday. Best of luck.