In recent years, Congress has expressed interest in intellectual property protection for industrial designs. In the 111 th Congress, legislation was introduced that would have established a "repair" exemption within the Patent Act. Although potentially of broad application, this legislation appears to have been motivated by intellectual property rights in the designs of automobile parts. Also in the 111 th Congress, proposed legislation would have provided proprietary rights in fashion designs. The Senate has also recently provided its consent to ratify the Geneva Act to the Hague Agreement Concerning the International Registration of Industrial Designs, an international agreement that would allow U.S. designers to obtain intellectual property protection overseas more readily. In addition to these legislative activities, industrial designs have also been subject to notable developments in the federal courts and internationally. Many of these issues may be subject to continued discussion in the 112 th Congress. A review of intellectual property issues pertaining to industrial designs therefore appears timely. The term "industrial design" broadly refers to the creation of the form and function of objects of everyday use. Virtually every manufactured product, including such items as automobiles, clothing, computers, footwear, furniture, and telephones, embodies an industrial design. Industrial designers perform the tasks previously accomplished by individual artisans with respect to mass-produced goods, commonly endeavoring to make products more convenient to use and more visually appealing. As explained by the Industrial Designers Society of America: Industrial design is the profession that determines the form of a manufactured product, shaping it to fit the people who use it and the industrial processes that produce it. Industrial Designers work to make our lives more comfortable, pleasurable and efficient. By studying people at work, at home and in motion, they create products like office chairs that promote proper posture, kitchen tools that are comfortable even for elderly hands and toys that provide safe play and learning for all children. In particular, Industrial Designers deal with the parts of a product that humans interact with, striving to give universal access to products that are ecologically responsible and safe to use. Also, they give a product with distinctive elegance that makes us want it. "Intellectual property" is a phrase that refers to proprietary rights in creations of the mind. Currently, some measure of protection for industrial designs can be found under three different intellectual property laws: copyright, trademark, and patent. Perceived shortcomings with these systems as applied to industrial designs have led to proposals to establish specialized, or sui generis , regimes that apply to particular sorts of designs. Congress established such a regime for boat hulls in 1988, and serious discussion is ongoing with respect to the merits of sui generis intellectual property rights for fashion designs. This report identifies several current issues relating to intellectual property in industrial designs. It begins by describing the different sorts of intellectual property protection that apply to industrial designs. The report then identifies current issues at the interface between intellectual property and industrial designs. The report closes by reviewing the impact that sui generis  rights regimes may have upon innovation and competition in the United States. Industrial designs that are well-received in the marketplace may attract competition. William T. Fryer III, a member of the faculty of the University of Baltimore School of Law, asserts that "[o]nce an effective product design is successful, competitors rush in and copy the product, particularly the product appearance." Advocates of enhanced protection for industrial designs therefore assert that intellectual property rights potentially provide an important mechanism for allowing innovators to reap the economic rewards of their investments. On the other hand, some observers are concerned that overly expansive intellectual property rights may raise prices and decrease the availability of consumer goods. Under current intellectual property laws, industrial designs may potentially be protected through copyright, trade dress, and design patents. Congress has also established a specialized, or sui generis , intellectual property right for the protection of boat hull designs. The Copyright Act of 1976 provides protection for original works of authorship. The types of creations addressed by copyright range from traditional works of art, including literature, music and visual art, to such modern forms of artistic expression as sound recordings, motion pictures and computer software. Copyright protection arises automatically, as soon as the work has been fixed in tangible form. Authors may register their works with the U.S. Copyright Office, however, and obtain certain procedural and substantive advantages during copyright enforcement. The copyright law affords authors the exclusive right to reproduce, adapt, and publicly distribute, perform, and display the protected work, subject to limitations such as the fair use privilege. The term of copyright is ordinarily the life of the author plus 70 years. The availability of copyright protection for industrial designs has been described as limited, however. The Copyright Act of 1976 provides protection for "pictorial, graphic, and sculptural works" but further explains that: the design of a useful article ... shall be considered a pictorial, graphic, or sculptural work only if, and only to the extent that, such design incorporates pictorial, graphic, or sculptural features that can be identified separately from, and are capable of existing independently of, the utilitarian aspects of the article. The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has explained that "[t]his limitation is in keeping with the notion that functional items are not eligible for the relatively long-term protections of copyright, as opposed to the more temporary rights provided by the Patent Act." Because industrial designs are commonly integrated into a "useful article" —such as automobiles, handheld electronic devices, or clothing—they are often not eligible for copyright. Protection for industrial designs may also occur under the trademark law in the form of "trade dress" protection. The term "trade dress" refers to the overall visual image that a product presents to consumers, including its design. To be entitled to trademark protection, a significant number of consumers must perceive the trade dress as denoting the product of a particular manufacturer, rather than being arbitrary or merely decorative, after the trade dress has been used in the market. In trademark law, this notion of acquired distinctiveness is termed "secondary meaning." Trademark rights in trade dress may arise under state law as soon as the product is used in commerce. However, trade dress may be registered with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), a step that affords significant substantive and procedural advantages. The trade dress owner may prevent others from using a similar product appearance that creates a likelihood of confusion as to the source or sponsorship of the associated goods. These rights persist so long as the trade dress continues to be used and retains its distinctiveness. Commentators have identified a primary limitation of trade dress protection with respect to industrial designs. Trade dress rights cannot be established in functional features of a product. Courts have reasoned that such protection would overly hamper competition and undermine the policies of the patent system. As a result, if the industrial design makes the product easier to manufacture, more convenient to ship, or work better, then it may not be subject to trade dress protection. In addition to granting so-called "utility patents" directed towards machines, manufactures, compositions of matter and processes, the Patent Act of 1952 also allows for "design patents." An inventor may obtain a design patent by filing an application with the USPTO directed towards a "new, original and ornamental design for an article of manufacture." Most design patent applications consist primarily of drawings that depict the shape or surface decoration of a particular product. They may concern any number of products, including "apparel, automobile parts, computer products, containers, cosmetics, electronics products, textile designs, home furnishings, home appliances, jewelry, motor vehicles, office supplies, optics and toys." To obtain protection, the design must not have been obvious to a designer of ordinary skill of that type of product. In addition, a design must be "primarily ornamental" to be awarded design patent protection. Similar to the doctrine of functionality in trademark law, if the design is instead "dictated by the performance of the article, then it is judged to be functional and ineligible for design patent protection." In such circumstances the designer should pursue a utility patent, which protects the functional and utilitarian aspects of products and processes. Issued design patents confer the right to exclude others from the "unauthorized manufacture, use, or sale of the article embodying the patented design or any colorable imitation thereof." The scope of protection of a design patent is provided by drawings within the design patent instrument. To establish infringement, the design patent proprietor must prove that "in the eye of an ordinary observer, giving such attention as a purchaser usually gives," the patented and accused designs "are substantially the same, if the resemblance is such as to deceive such an observer, inducing him to purchase one supposing it is the other." The courts also require that "no matter how similar two items look, the accused device must appropriate the novelty in the patented device" that distinguishes it from earlier designs. The term of a design patent is 14 years from the date the USPTO issues the patent. Intellectual property attorneys Richard Sybert and Lindsay Hulley have explained that the "best protection for product design is likely a design patent in the United States...." Design patents have been described as less expensive to prepare than utility patents, and unlike utility patents they are not subject to "maintenance fees" that must be submitted to the USPTO during the life of the patent. In contrast to copyright enforcement, design patent infringement does not require a showing that the defendant accessed the prohibited design and copied it. And unlike trademark, the design patent holder need show neither the existence of consumer confusion nor the design's acquisition of "secondary meaning" in order to prove infringement. The design patent regime has nonetheless been subject to criticism by industry representatives, lawyers, and academics alike. Some commentators have expressed concerns that the standards of novelty and nonobviousness, which the design patent law essentially adapted from the law of utility patents, do not provide apt or fair evaluating criteria for industrial designs.