In what has been called the patent war of the century, the U.S. patent litigation between Samsung and Apple centered on the issue
of design patents. Design rights protect the appearance of an article and are relatively easy to identify and enforce,
which is why the power of design was so powerful in the patent wars of the century.

Design rights are also a great way to protect your business's identity, as they can be protected even if you only have drawings or prototypes that confirm the appearance of the goods, making it easy to try and obtain rights.

As industries become more competitive, design plays a crucial role in determining whether or not consumers will purchase a product,
and as various industries put a lot of effort into design development, there are increasing calls for expanding and strengthening design protection.
Reflecting this, Korea used to protect only the appearance of goods as designs, but after several amendments,
cute emoticons can now be protected as images themselves, and recently, architecture and indoor terriers have been included as objects of design protection.

With so many different design elements now protected by design rights,
it's a useful right to have that is easy to obtain and strong to use when building your business's identity.