An en banc panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit will soon decide whether to amend its long-standing framework for assessing design patent obviousness, known as the Rosen-Durling test. The forthcoming decision in LKQ v. GM Global Technology Operations, No. 2021-2348 (LKQ) will be the first en banc decision the Federal Circuit has issued in a design patent case since 2008.
On Feb. 5, 2024 the Federal Circuit heard arguments in the rehearing en banc in LKQ, which asks whether and how the obviousness test for design patents should be modified in light of the more flexible approach to obviousness that the Supreme Court endorsed in the utility patent context in KSR International v. Telflex, 550 U.S. 398 (2007) (KSR).
