Existing and prospective limitations in exterior automotive design. How patentability is limited, but may hold value.
Given the realm of the three possible patents one can file in the United States (Design, Utility and Plant) there are vast opportunities in product development patentability as predecessor product models change and modifications are needed to accommodate market needs—patentability is a necessity to secure and distinguish one’s individual work effort from another, thus the options to improve novelty always exists. One area of importance in patentability and novelty that could possibly see scarcity in innovation where the need for strategic intellectual property facilitation exists, is automotive design.
Cars, trucks, moving vehicles primarily in the consumer sector face strong limitations in design as there are many confounds that may limit concepts. The restrictions correlate to the success of a design and it’s consumer use, because of the many factors that may affect it’s practicality and use case within the market. As the convention of cars and automotive design have originated and evolved to transport people and things from one place to another, design in the automotive industry has always faced intellectual property overlapping, infringements, inaccuracies in design and / or lack of improvement due to limitations. Some of these include:
- Lane sizes, road markings, gaps and openings where the use case may be implemented.
- Terrain complexities and road conditions, simplicity in surroundings and other land mass variables.
- The movement of people, the amount of people and objects within and around the vehicle’s surrounding areas.
- Technological features both external and internal that must fit and work within the confounds of the vehicle.
- Local, state and regional guidelines on how and where the vehicle may and may not operate.
These are only a few of of the obstacles vehicle design and engineering may face in order to bring a successful design to market, but the topic at hand is that the vehicle design industry is scarce in the context of prospective uniqueness and design strategy should be implemented long term. Unlike boats and aircraft where design have much more room for space and time—as you can technically build higher and wider—the automotive industry has horizontal and vertical ranges where design guidelines are limited thus affecting the design process and it’s patentability value giving good designers strong value in automotive design patents if done right.
Given the trend for the above this presents complexity in design in the automotive industry, good designers who understand vehicle limitations are needed to secure IP as multiple designs from one company to another may start overlapping and or hold discrepancies based on the confounds mentioned above. If this proves true, automotive design patents that proved 6 degrees of separation should hold successful in those patents as curves, edges, bend ability, inclinations, declinations, surface areas, extremities and other variables may produce overlapping designs, thus making it harder to compete.
Given the opinionated analysis above, industry experts could take value in improving their automotive design supply chain by understating that design IP in the context of the automotive industry is valuable as it may be highly competitive and limited due to such limitations. To ensure competitiveness, automakers should first acknowledge the limitations mentioned above through facilitation, to name a few:
- Finding key designers who understand the confounds and limitations of moving vehicles for land based systems.
- Hire top tier designers versed in “tool” design who should work side by side of head automotive designers to identify discrepancies in the design process.
- Hire designers versed in object movement—sometimes bringing on board interns such as qualified food delivery drivers may help understand road conditions better.
- Attain researchers that understand design shifts in the automotive industry from a human factors perspective.
- Retain an IP specialist that can identify car design history assess it’s position of novelty. It would be beneficial if this specialist were versed in either industrial, mechanical and / or human factors engineering.
Given the car market is demanding, how these vehicles look from the outside distinguishes one work effort from another. Automotive patents have a litigative road ahead, unless the supply chain in design is innovated.