The United States Patent and Trademark Office has issued a Request for Comments on its proposed guidance to patent examiners regarding the written description requirement in Section 112 of the Patent Act with respect to design patents. The proposed guidance would address situations where an amended or continuing application claims only a subset of the elements disclosed in an earlier or original application. In other words, in the example below, if the original claim comprised the images on the left, can the amended claim cover only the subset of elements shown in solid lines on the right?
