In 2011 30,467 design patent applications were submitted to the U.S. Patent and Trademark office and 21,356 of these were accepted. Of this number, thousands of product submissions for toys design patents each year are received, and knowing how to correctly process and protect design and brand is a key factor to both design and legal teams. To assist learning about this process, the Toy Industry Association (TIA) will be hosting an educational webinar on October 25, 2012 to inform toy industry stakeholders with a deeper understanding of the role that design patents play in the toy and game industry. This webinar, titled The Best Deal in Patents: Design Patents and the Role They Play in Protecting Toys and Games will help address the process and intellectual property subject of design patents.
This webinar is recommended for those who work with toy design and invention, and intellectual property rights. Steven J. Schwarz, a seasoned patent attorney, will present the webinar and cover the following topics:
- A brief overview of Intellectual Property rights including patents, trademarks, copyrights, and trade secrets
- Definition of design patents and what they cover
- The benefits of design patents
- The process, including costs and timeframe, of obtaining a design patent
- The relationship between design patents and other types of IP protection
- A recent smash success for design patents case study: Apple v. Samsung
For registration, please click here.