Virtual Designs

Industrial design is migrating to the virtual world, and the design patent system is migrating with it. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has already granted several thousand design patents on virtual designs, patents that cover the designs of graphical user interfaces for smartphones, tablets, and other products, as well as the designs of icons or other artifacts of various virtual environments. Many more such design patent applications are pending; in fact, U.S. design patent applications for virtual designs represent one of the fastest growing forms of design subject matter at the USPTO. Our project is the first comprehensive analysis of design patent protection for virtual designs. We first take up the question of virtual designs as design patent-eligible subject matter, a question that has not yet been tested in the courts. We show that longstanding principles of design patent jurisprudence supply an answer to the question, with surprisingly little need for adaptation. We then present the results of an empirical study analyzing all issued U.S. design patents on virtual designs and their prosecution histories. Here we show how utility patent metrics for quality and value can be extended to design patents. Using these metrics, we show that design patents on virtual designs fare at least as well in quality and value as do design patents on other types of designs. In fact, design patents on virtual designs fare better in some respects. And, finally, we conclude by identifying issues that are likely to arise in anticipated future litigation over patents on virtual designs

The Muqarnas in contemporary art and epigraphic design: developing technical vision in the design of the muqarnas

This thesis is about muqarnas, a type of three-dimensional decorative finishing strip using concave elements. It is a kind of corbel used in Islamic architecture both as a decorative motif and as an enriched block or horizontal bracket. It is generally found under the cornice and above the bed -mould of the Corinthian entablature, and at the same time, it hides the transitional zones between various surfaces (e.g. arches, domes, capitals, windows, ceilings, minarets, mihrabs, minbar, façade). It can take a number of forms and in some circumstances resembles stalactites. It has been applied, artistically, to different materials (e.g. stucco, stone, marble, wood, faience and polychrome) in unique, regularly spaced, geometric arrangements.The muqarnas is an important feature in Islamic architecture because of its social, cultural and symbolic meanings. The research aim is to critically analyse the muqarnas and to shed light on its genesis, nature and evolution. This will be followed by an attempt to transform the muqarnas to suit modern use without losing its meaning. This study will highlight the importance of providing a simple software program for modelling the muqarnas, relevant to the field of Islamic architecture, epigraphic design and art such that it can be appreciated by contemporary practitioners, especially contemporary viewers, who will find different options in the model (muqarnas blocks) that will allow them to assess alternative designs and have them ready for use in the form of computerised two -dimensional and three-dimensional drawings.The thesis begins with a first chapter comprising an introduction to the background, aim, objectives, methodology and the significance of the research. The second chapter is a review of the history of muqarnas and offers an interpretation of all the figures that combine to make the muqarnas types, spatial compositions in interlocking values. The chapter also explores the cultural and compositional units (cube, sphere, wall, columns and arches) and the properties of the organic rules of the muqarnas. The third chapter is an analysis of the proportional order and harmony of each element of the muqarnas units in Islamic architecture. The fourth chapter puts an intellectual and subjective perspective on the properties of the muqarnas, concentrating on structural transformation in Islamic art and architecture using structuralism and associated theories. The fifth chapter reviews the performance of the muqarnas design processing program `Generator of Mugarnas'. This program can be used to visualise data generated from the blocks of muqarnas, to create a user interface and to convert two-dimensional plans into three- dimensional muqarnas data. The program is based on the original muqarnas types and allows for efficiency of working with materials, textures, colours and light. The final chapter concludes with a brief overview of the significance of the study.This innovative approach to the modern world will introduce the aesthetics of the muqarnas to a new audience, and rekindle the interest of designers, artists and architects. Using the program they will find alternatives ready for use in the form of computer -generated muqarnas drawings which will help them, as they are easy to use, saving time and effort. The author has made contact with professionals who are interested in using muqamas and those who are looking to invest and publish the software program when it has been fully developed and tested

Influence of a hybrid digital toolset on the creative behaviors of designers in early-stage design

The purpose of this research was to investigate how diversification of the repertoire of digital design techniques affects the creative behaviors of designers in the early design phases. The principal results of practice-based pilot experiments on the subject indicate three key properties of the hybrid digital tooling strategy. The strategy features intelligent human-machine integration, facilitating three different types of synergies between the designer and the digital media: human-dominated, machine-dominated, and a balanced human-machine collaboration. This strategy also boosts the cognitive behaviors of the designer by triggering divergent, transformative and convergent design activities and allowing for work on various abstraction levels. In addition, the strategy stimulates the explorative behaviors of the designer by encouraging the production of and interaction with a wide range of design representations, including physical and digital, dynamic and static objects. Thus, working with a broader range of digital modeling techniques can positively influence the creativity of designers in the early conception stages

Decontextualized learning for interpretable hierarchical representations of visual patterns

Apart from discriminative models for classification and object detection tasks, the application of deep convolutional neural networks to basic research utilizing natural imaging data has been somewhat limited; particularly in cases where a set of interpretable features for downstream analysis is needed, a key requirement for many scientific investigations. We present an algorithm and training paradigm designed specifically to address this: decontextualized hierarchical representation learning (DHRL). By combining a generative model chaining procedure with a ladder network architecture and latent space regularization for inference, DHRL address the limitations of small datasets and encourages a disentangled set of hierarchically organized features. In addition to providing a tractable path for analyzing complex hierarchal patterns using variation inference, this approach is generative and can be directly combined with empirical and theoretical approaches. To highlight the extensibility and usefulness of DHRL, we demonstrate this method in application to a question from evolutionary biology

A process for creating Celtic knot work

Celtic art contains mysterious and fascinating aesthetic elements including complex knot work motifs. The problem is that creating and exploring these motifs require substantial human effort. One solution to this problem is to create a process that collaboratively uses interactive and procedural methods within a computer graphic environment. Spline models of Celtic knot work can be interactively modeled and used as input into procedural shaders. Procedural shaders are computer programs that describe surface, light, and volumetric appearances to a renderer. The control points of spline models can be used to drive shading procedures such as the coloring and displacement of surface meshes. The result of this thesis provides both an automated and interactive process that is capable of producing complex interlaced structures such as Celtic knot work within a three-dimensional environment