V.V. Mordvinova
Russian Patent Attorney
Saint-Petersburg
Lately, more and more often, dotted lines have appeared in images of patented industrial designs. The share of such patents has reached about 10%, at that, the leaders of such depiction of industrial designs are applicants from US, IT, KR, SE, FI. Predominantly, patents have been issued for such objects as "Graphical interface". So, the company SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS CO., LTD (KR) regularly patented industrial designs wherein dotted lines were used in the images for visual binding of graphic elements (menus, buttons, icons, lists, etc.) to mobile devices (patents Nos. 91034 - 91045). The user interface elements made in the form of various graphic images and arranged in a certain order within the mobile device display received legal protection as industrial designs. See the patents Nos. 91039, 92181 and 92396 (on the illustration).