Appeal No. 98-1900
Application D-07/715,260
The majority in Strijland went further and, in dicta,
stated, at 26 USPQ2d 1263,
Had appellants’ specification, as originally
filed, included the language added by the above
referred to amendments, and included drawings of the
type shown in the addendum to this opinion we would 2
have held that the claimed design is statutory
subject matter, and the design would have been
patentable in the absence of other grounds of
rejection.
While not having the force of law, this dicta was the
subject of the Guidelines for Examination of Design Patent
Applications for Computer-Generated Icons (Guidelines), 1185
Off. Gaz. Pat. & Trademark Off. 60 (April 16, 1996) and
incorporated into the Manual of Patent Examining Procedures
(MPEP) § 1504.01 (6th ed., rev. 3, July 1997) § 1504.01.
Since an icon, per se, as depicted in the instant case,
as originally filed, is a mere picture, not part of any
embodiment of an article of manufacture, the examiner quite
properly, and in accordance with Strijland and the Guidelines,
rejected the design claim for “The ornamental design for an
2Those drawings depict the icon on a display screen of
a computer, the computer processor and the video monitor
having the display screen being all in dotted lines.
4
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