Filing for a design patent should invalidate any claim to copyright on the features of the design that are claimed in the patent. Pick your IP protection lane, you can't have your cake and eat it too.
> Filing for a design patent should invalidate any claim to copyright on the features of the design that are claimed in the patent. Pick your IP protection lane, you can't have your cake and eat it too.
Oh, I so wish that were true.
Software is the poster child for multiple IP regimes applying to the same thing, with copyrights applying twice over (source code and object code/binary executable) as well as patents. Patents can in theory also be applicable to the compilation of source code into object code, but as far as I'm aware no one has pursued a case on that basis, and in any case open source compilers are now standard.
But it gets even crazier when you start adding trademark and trade dress (ie. "look and feel" etc.) into the mix.
Just about the only form of IP that in practice is invalidated by the other forms is trade secret, as the others all involve some form of disclosure or publication.
