Samantha Wald has posted Siri, Define 'Article of Manufacture': Redesigning the Definition of 'Article of Manufacture' in Section 289 of the Patent Act (Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal, Vol. 38, No. 2, 2020) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
The Supreme Court’s exceedingly broad, perhaps overly simplified, reading of the phrase “article of manufacture” in Samsung v. Apple inappropriately expands the statutory term beyond its intended scope. Accordingly, this Note proposes an alternative definition for the term “article of manufacture” that provides a more applicable standard for determining when the relevant article of manufacture should be treated as the whole commercial product or as some smaller unit, distinguishing components of a claimed design that constitute relevant, distinct parts of a whole product from those that are merely features of that product. Rather than broadly capturing or excluding all components, this definition explicitly delineates when a component of the whole commercial product constitutes the relevant article of manufacture. This interpretation advances a workable definition of the term “article of manufacture” that more easily identifies the relevant article of manufacture for arriving at a damages award under Section 289 of the Patent Act. If implemented, this definition would establish predictability through the furtherance of clearer guidelines; therefore, adopting the definition of “article of manufacture” proposed herein would indubitably foster consistency in design patent law.
