U.S. Patent No. D822,755 S (‘755) issued on July 10, 2018, for “Eyeglasses.” It was issued to inventors Evan Spiegel of Venice, California, Lauryn Morris, of Los Angeles, California, David Meisenholder of Venice, California, and Qiaokun Huang of Venice, California. The applicant/assignee is Snap Inc., the parent company of the social media company Snapchat. Evan Spiegel is also the company’s CEO. This patent is a design patent under 35 U.S.C. §171, which protects the ornamental features of an article of manufacture. The features include a smart eyeglass with raised contours on the upper left and right of the eyeglass (when looking at the eyeglass head-on). The contoured design apparently also includes a wearable tech that could include a camera, or microcomputer that could play music or contain a timing device. This is the specific feature claimed in the design (shown by the unbroken and shaded lines); the actual eyeglass is not (shown by the broken or dotted lines).
Figure 1 below illustrates the ornamental features of the eyeglass.
Under 35 U.S.C. §173, he ‘755 patent, like all design patents, has a patent term of 15 years, and expires on July 10, 2033 (MPEP 1505).
The U.S. Patent Classification is D16/335 (photography and optical equipment, specifically cameras, projectors, viewers, photographic accessories, ophthalmic articles, or optical articles not specified elsewhere).
This is example of what can be protected as a design patent, which currently is about 10% of all patents issued by the USPTO. This number, however, is growing as more of American businesses begin to see the benefits of protecting ornamental features of articles of manufacture. Please contact Yonaxis for more information on patent processes if you have any questions.