SurgiSil’s Design Patent Application on Lip Implant Revived

SurgiSil LLC convinced the Federal Circuit that its application for a design patent on a lip implant was improperly rejected by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

The Patent Trial and Appeal Board upheld an examiner’s rejection of the application as anticipated by a similarly shaped art tool called a stump.

“A design claim is limited to the article of manufacture identified in the claim; it does not broadly cover a design in the abstract,” the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit said in a precedential opinion reversing the board’s ruling.

The court cited its ruling from 2019, ...