Last week, the Federal Circuit Court reversed the Patent Trial and Appeal Board decision in In re Surgisil, L.L.P., overturning the Board’s ruling that a design for a rolled-paper art tool for blending anticipated Surgisil’s (Applicant) claimed lip implant. In re Surgisil, L.L.P., No. 2020-1940, 2021 WL 4515275 (Fed. Cir. Oct. 4, 2021). Although the “stump” art tool cited as prior art in Surgisil resembled Applicant’s lip implant (see below), the Federal Circuit found that Applicant’s “claim is limited to lip implants and does not cover other articles of manufacture.” From this finding, the Surgisil court appears to extrapolate a symmetry by which a design for an artist’s stump is both ineligible for citation against Applicant’s lip implant in patent prosecution and also not covered in a putative enforcement of Applicant’s design.

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