A jury in San Jose, Calif., recently found that Samsung Electronics infringed on Apple’s patents, awarding the iPod manufacturer more than $1 billion in damages. We asked Susan Barbieri Montgomery, executive professor of law and business at Northeastern University, to expound on a lesser-known form of intellectual property (IP): design-patent protection. Here, she discusses Apple’s design patent on the physical design of the iPad (U.S. Patent No. D618,677) and whether the role of this patent will inspire a surge in applications for U.S. design-patent protection.
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