U.S. Patent No. D842,331 S (‘331) issued on March 5, 2019, for “Display Screen or Portion Thereof with Animated Graphical User Interface.” It was issued to inventors Jisi Guo, Eli Guerron, Craig Dehner, Frank Yoo, Karina van Schaardenburg, and Hernrique Penha, all of San Francisco, California. The applicant/assignee is Lyft, Inc. of San Francisco, California, a ride share/ride hailing company. This patent is a design patent under 35 U.S.C. §171, which protects the ornamental features of an article of manufacture. The features cover a novel design for a GUI with animation. While not claimed as part of the design, the drawings indicate that the GUI could include the car, the street, and neighboring buildings, and other objects on the street at the time the car is driving, including pedestrians and bicyclists.
Figure 2 illustrates the ornamental features of the animated GUI:
The Cooperative Patent Classification are G06F (electric digital data processing, namely, interaction techniques based on graphical user interfaces with three-dimensional environments, e.g., control of viewpoint to navigate in the environment); G09B (educational or demonstration appliances; appliances for teaching, or comunicating with, the blind, deaf or mute, namely, route diagrams or map projections or methods associated specifically therewith, and map spot or coordinate position indicators). Based on the searched classifications, it could be inferred that the GUI is not for a consumer’s viewing, but rather for the driver’s viewing, which may appear on the driver’s dashboard to aid in coordinating a pickup or dropoff.
Design patents are slowly becoming an important aspect of a tech company’s patent portfolio. Lyft recently announced plans to file for an initial public offering (IPO), making it the first of the major rideshare companies to go public. As of the end of 2018, Lyft had 12 issued patents, and 20 published patent applications in its patent portfolio. Its main rival, Uber, Inc., which also has planned an IPO for later this year, had 497 issued patents, and 262 publised patent applications at the end of 2018. This blog will profile an Uber design patent in a later posting. Please contact Yonaxis for more information on design patents, or patents in general, if you have any questions.