A study on Design Patent Knowledge Base System

A Design Patent Knowledge Base System (DPKBS) is an important strategic tool in the formulation of design strategies. Among the different types of patents, design patents have emerged as a unique domain in the field of patents. Design patents are created primarily to safeguard the rights to product exteriors, but the scope is harder to define compared to utility patents. As such, the construction of a DPKBS has become a very difficult undertaking. In this research, the authors have chosen 48 US automobile design patents as the samples for this research and enlisted the assistance of six patent examiners (with average patent examination experience of over 12 years) at the Taiwan Intellectual Property Office to construct a DPKBS. We hope that in the foreseeable future, corporations will able to construct their own DPKBS with the help of intellectual property experts and refer to this research in establishing their patent deployment strategies.