We all know that in certain industries, the lifespan of a design is quite short.
Fashion & Graphic Design: 1 to 5 years
Consumer Electronics: 2 to 5 years
Industrial & Household Goods: 5 to 25+ years
With the US 2–3 years (and as experienced currently by some 1200 days) of wait for a design patent for a single shape, it seems that the USPTO is working for the museum industry.
It takes YEARS to examine and eventually issue (or decline) a patent in the US. That’s the very reason we have a program accelerating examinations for older inventors. The USPTO makes the effort, so the US inventor can receive the “patent,” or rather the badge of honor, before his/her death.
I think we should have special ceremony to deliver patents to the geriatrics’ wards of hospitals and nursing homes.
Unfortunately, the continuous effort of the BIG $ Fifth Column (Aka Supreme Court) working tirelessly to undermine the patents in the US doesn’t make the patent a valuable bequest. The popular opinion among inventors it is a liability.
Since the average age of US inventors is 47years old and growing, there is hope that most of them are young enough not to need the geriatric patients’ acceleration program.
In 99 countries. You can have “Industrial design registration” applied for and done in a matter of literally a few days.
Just upload some drawings to the WIPO website, pay the fee, and don’t worry about the next 5–25 years. YOU ARE DONE.
The additional eye-opening miracle of the “Hague agreement” for the user from the God-forbidden US periphery of our planet is the fact that you can register up to 100 designs in one single application.
The cost is not US $1040 for a single design. It is on average $79 per design in each of the 99 countries, or less depending on what country, countries you register in.
And you can be done with it in a day.
5 years ago, 6 designs registered in the EU, plus Norway, Switzerland, and Great Britain (30 countries) cost 1475 Swiss Francs. Today, the WIPO costs are still the same, while the USPTO has raised its fees twice.
Under a heavy burden of examining what others using common sense reduced to simple registration of priority and left examinations for better times (Examination by Competitors – No PTAB needed) when the thing actually makes money, in the US we raised fees twice in October 2020 and, most significantly, in January 2025. The January 2025 update implemented the most comprehensive changes across the board, adjusting over 430 patent fees and introducing numerous new surcharges.
•Design Patents: Filing and issue fees saw increases of up to 27% and 76%, respectively.
•Continuing Applications: New, hefty fees were introduced for continuing applications filed more than six ($2,700) or nine ($4,000)) years after the earliest benefit date.
•Simply, they are trying to kill the thing
Today
The Hague Agreement, fully implemented in the US (not converted into the “US Design patent as it is done today), is the common-sense dream of so many US inventors.
Just register the damn thing to have priority and worry about more then formal examinations when really needed, and your contraption makes real money. Just do that and 98% of USPTO work will disappear overnight since the 2% represents the number of successful designs. Plus, nobody wants to deal with the 5th column / Supreme Court legal inventions trying to separate the “ORNAMENTAL” element of the US DESIGN PATENT from the UTILITY side. And denying it because this or that single line has a practical function.
It reminds me of the medieval discussions about the number of Devils you can fit on the tip of a sewing needle. The US Supreme Court clearly tries to make it impossible to have a design patent in the US, like they did by introducing their “Judicial exceptions”(Ban on patents in certain technologies by pure accident matching the interest of the BIG TECH) and barring injunctions in patent cases.
It is just common sense to have the flow of new ideas at as little cost as possible. At least our ancestors had some.
Much less work for the USPTO, freeing numbers of examiners to work on utility patents. Instead of issuing patents to inventors already occupying cemetery lots.
Of course, this is just a dream. It is not going to happen on this side of our planet. BIG TECH is afraid of competition. Because the mice in their garages usually have better ideas than the BIG$. Who needs a competition when the money is flowing?
Not the billionaires.
Today. The six designs registered for $1475 with WIPO in 30 countries in the US alone cost $6240. Great way to promote inventions!!!
I wonder how some of us still have the illusion that US and US inventions will dominate the world in the not so distant future. The Supreme Court bans patents in the form of “judicial exceptions”. Legislations, like PERA and PREVAIL trying to preserve PTAB and make ‘JUDICIAL EXCEPTION” as part of the official laws leaves no doubt.
PS
All Independent US inventors appreciate the current director’s, John A. Squires’ effort to make the system at least little bit inventor-friendly, but we know that after he is gone, the corruption of our political system will not allow the US patent policy to align with the real interests of our country, and only few have resources and contacts to offers free vacations and RVs to the legal minds….
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The popularity of paper flowers, no doubt, is growing, since recently I saw in Rome a few Paper pop-up bouquets made by an Italian company, claiming that they were the first to come up with such an idea. Good for them.
