When we think of intellectual property potection, we usually think of patents, trade-marks and copyright. Less top of mind are registered industrial designs. They protect unique, non-utilitarian design aspects of an article. While they are thought of as a patent – indeed, in the US they are called design patents and are contained within the utility patent database – they are really more akin to trade-marks and copyright.
Read more in my Free Press article on my blog [1], or on the Free Press site [2]. (For some reason it hasn’t made the Canoe Tech page yet this week.)