A recent Federal Circuit decision, Curver Luxembourg, SARL v. Home Expressions (Fed. Cir. 2019), held, in what the court described as a matter of first impression, that a design patent for surface ornamentation entitled “Pattern for a Chair” was limited in scope to ornamental designs for chairs, and thus there was no infringement by the defendant who allegedly used the same pattern for a basket.

The Curver Luxembourg decision is a large step in resolving what had been open legal issues about the scope of design patents: Are design patents limited to specific “articles of manufacture” or do they also cover designs in the abstract? Does the title of the design patent (which must recite the article of the design) limit the scope of the patent grant (and hence the scope of potential infringement), the same way as claim terms do for a utility patent?