Design Patents Just Got Easier to Challenge — LKQ Corp. v. GM Global Technology Operations LLC

Design Patents Just Got Easier to Challenge — LKQ Corp. v. GM Global Technology Operations LLC

^{October 27, 2026 | Intellectual Property News, Legal News}

Decision: LKQ Corp. v. GM Global Technology Operations LLC, 102 F.4th 1280 (Fed. Cir. 2024) (en banc) — U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, decided May 21, 2024.

The holding. Sitting en banc for the first time in a patent case since 2018, the Federal Circuit threw out the Rosen-Durling test that had governed design-patent obviousness for more than forty years. Under that test, a challenger first had to find a single prior-art design that was “basically the same” as the claimed design; if none existed, the obviousness inquiry stopped there. The court held that test was improperly rigid and inconsistent with the Supreme Court’s flexible approach to obviousness in KSR. Design patents must now be judged under the same flexible obviousness framework as utility patents: a design can be obvious based on a combination of prior-art references, judged from the perspective of an ordinary designer, without first clearing the single-reference hurdle.

What it means. This is the most consequential design-patent decision in a generation. Design patents — on car fenders, phone shapes, furniture, packaging — were historically hard to invalidate on obviousness grounds, and that durability was part of their value. LKQ changes the calculus on both sides. Patent owners should expect more obviousness challenges, including at the PTAB, and should build their portfolios and their prosecution records with that in mind: document the design choices, the problems solved, and the commercial success tied to the look of the product. Accused infringers and aftermarket competitors, meanwhile, have a genuinely new invalidity tool — combinations of prior designs that would previously have been barred at the threshold are now fair game. The decision also leaves open how the flexible test will be applied in practice, so the next few years of cases will matter as much as this one.

Sources:

• Opinion: LKQ Corp. v. GM Global Technology Operations LLC, 102 F.4th 1280 (Fed. Cir. 2024) (en banc)
• Also consulted: Morrison Foerster, “Federal Circuit Overrules Obviousness Test for Design Patents” (May 23, 2024); Ballard Spahr, “Full Federal Circuit Eliminates ‘Improperly Rigid’ Tests for Design Patent Obviousness” (May 2024)