It’s a weird thing right? Nobody thinks about design patents but there’s so many out there now.

So for logos, those are protected by trademark, which is different from a patent. Patents are usually for “intellectual property” or inventions, but only in the visual sense. I think it’s important to realize that companies are not patenting the convention of something, and they CANNOT patent something purely for functionality. They are protecting the “thing that makes them them” is how I like to call it.

That means they aren’t patenting a design system. Like yes every company either has a square button or rounded pill button, there’s not that many shapes it can come in. But rather how that visual identity is used in a specific setting and context, is enough to set it apart from competitors.

The spotify CTA, it’s a pill button, nothing special about that. But the way it floats halfway on a line, like yeah I’d say that’s special enough to patent. Because if you made the exact same music app with the same UI but different colors, that floating CTA would be the one thing to people go, “Oh it feels kind of Spotify-ey.” Same with Robinhood’s share price, and the Lyft ETA, there’s similar things out there in the wild but the visual plus the context does give it that extra “Oh, that feels very Lyft.” And for Lyft specifically they actually double down on this lozenge/pill shape in other parts of their experiences such as the ride pick up color in the actual vehicle.

The lyft two column is similar to iOS time selection in that both sides scroll, but visually it is very different. Gotta remember that you cannot patent functionality you can only patent visual usage. And it’s everything about it, like the rounded box container, with the dividing lines in between. The centered text alignment, down to its spacial relationship with the CTA.