35 USC § 173 - Term of design patent

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Patents for designs shall be granted for the term of fourteen years from the date of grant.

Source

(July 19, 1952, ch. 950, 66 Stat. 805; Pub. L. 97–247, § 16,Aug. 27, 1982, 96 Stat. 321; Pub. L. 103–465, title V, § 532(c)(3),Dec. 8, 1994, 108 Stat. 4987.)

Historical and Revision Notes

Based on Title 35, U.S.C., 1946 ed., § 77 (R.S. 4931). Language is changed slightly.

Amendments

1994—Pub. L. 103–465inserted “from the date of grant” after “years”.

1982—Pub. L. 97–247substituted “Patents for designs shall be granted for the term of fourteen years” for “Patents for designs may be granted for the term of three years and six months, or for seven years, or for fourteen years, as the applicant, in his application, elects”.

Effective Date of 1994 Amendment

Amendment by Pub. L. 103–465effective 6 months after Dec. 8, 1994, and applicable to all patent applications filed in the United States on or after that effective date, with provisions relating to earliest filed patent application, see section 534(b)(1), (3) ofPub. L. 103–465, set out as a note under section 154 of this title.

Effective Date of 1982 Amendment

Amendment by Pub. L. 97–247effective Oct. 1, 1982, see section 17(a) ofPub. L. 97–247, set out as a note under section 41 of this title.

The table below lists the classification updates, since Jan. 3, 2012, for this section. Updates to a broader range of sections may be found at the update page for containing chapter, title, etc.

The most recent Classification Table update that we have noticed was Wednesday, December 26, 2012

An empty table indicates that we see no relevant changes listed in the classification tables. If you suspect that our system may be missing something, please double-check with the Office of the Law Revision Counsel.

How To Use

Multiple entries for a section are listed most recent first, within the section.

The Session Year indicates which session of Congress was responsible for the changes classified. The Congress number forms the first part of the Public Law number; each Congress has two sessions.

Abbreviations used in the Description of Change column:

An empty field implies a standard amendment.
"new" means a new section or new note, or all new text of an existing section or note.
"nt" means note.
"nt [tbl]" means note [table].
"prec" means preceding.
"fr" means a transfer from another section.
"to" means a transfer to another section.
"omitted" means the section is omitted.
"repealed" means the section is repealed.
"nt ed change" and "ed change" - See the Editorial Classification Change Table [pdf].

The Public Law field is linked to the development of the law in the Thomas system at the Library of Congress.

The Statutes at Large field is linked to the text of the law, in the context of its volume of the Statutes at Large, at the Government Printing Office. Please note that it takes a while for these pages to get posted, so for very recent legislation, you need to look at the "enrolled" version at the Thomas site.

The Statutes at Large references have been rendered in the format used as page numbers in the Public Law web pages to which we link, to facilitate copy-paste into browser "find on this (web) page" tools. We are still working on a more direct link facility.

For serious comparison work, we suggest copying all or a portion of the Public Law text into your favorite text editor, for convenient content traversal and window control.

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General Reference

Refer to the LRC (Law Revision Council) for explanations about the US Code from the folks who put it all together.

You can look for information about what it is and is not, which titles are positive law, the schedule of Supplements, etc. Under download you can find the source data we use here (GPO locator files), as well as, PDF files that look just like the paper books (these may be rather large).

Refer to the Thomas site for changes that have not yet made it into the classification tables.

35 USC	Description of Change	Session Year	Public Law	Statutes at Large
§ 173		2012	112-211 [Sec.] 102(7)	126 Stat. 1532

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35 USC § 173 - Term of design patent

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