USPTO’s March 2026 Design Patent Guidance: AR, VR, Holograms, and Projections Are Now Protectable

On March 13, 2026, the United States Patent and Trademark Office published what is arguably the most significant update to U.S. design patent examination practice in decades. The Supplemental Guidance for Examination of Design Patent Applications Related to Computer-Generated Interfaces and Icons, issued under Docket No. PTO-P-2026-0133 and effective immediately upon publication in the Federal Register, fundamentally reshapes what can be protected as a design patent in America.

The short version for the time-pressed: augmented reality interfaces, virtual reality environments, holographic displays, and projected keyboards can now be protected as design patents in the United States. The longstanding requirement that design patent drawings must show a physical display screen has been eliminated. And the claim language “for a computer” is now explicitly sufficient to tie a digital design to an article of manufacture under 35 U.S.C. § 171. For anyone who has been watching the AR/VR/spatial computing space and the frustrating gap between the technology’s capabilities and the law’s ability to protect it, this guidance is a meaningful step forward.

Background: Why Design Patents for Digital Interfaces Were Always Complicated

Design patents under 35 U.S.C. § 171 protect “new, original and ornamental designs for an article of manufacture.” The key phrase is that last one: article of manufacture. Courts and the USPTO have consistently held that a design patent cannot claim a disembodied image or a purely transient visual effect. The design must be tied to some physical article. For GUIs and icons displayed on screens, this was manageable. The standard practice, codified in MPEP § 1504.01(a) through 2023 guidance, was to show the computer display screen in the design patent drawings. The screen was the article of manufacture. The GUI or icon was the ornamental design applied to it.

But what about an interface projected onto a table surface from a device sitting across the room? What about a VR overlay that appears to float in three-dimensional space within a headset? What about a holographic assistant that materializes in the air in front of you? There is no “screen” to draw. The old framework, applied literally, required examiners to reject these claims because the drawings didn’t depict a physical display panel. This created a serious protection gap precisely as spatial computing technologies were maturing. The Apple Vision Pro launched. Meta continued advancing its Quest line. Industrial AR applications became mainstream tools on factory floors. All of these products feature richly designed interfaces, and under the pre-2026 USPTO guidance, the ornamental design of those interfaces had no clear path to design patent protection in the United States.

The USPTO received public comments about this problem going back to at least December 2020, when the Office published a Request for Information on whether its interpretation of the article of manufacture requirement should be revised. Of the 19 comment submissions received, twelve advocated specifically for recognizing projections, holograms, and VR/AR designs (referred to in USPTO shorthand as “PHVAR”) as design-patent eligible. The March 2026 guidance is the belated but substantive answer to those twelve commenters.

The Five Core Changes You Need to Know

The headline change is the elimination of the display screen drawing requirement. Under the guidance effective March 13, 2026, applicants are no longer required to depict a physical display panel in their drawings, as long as both the title and the claim language properly identify an article of manufacture. The relevant MPEP provision, § 1504.01(a), has been updated accordingly. Applicants may still choose to show the display screen using broken lines, and there are strategic reasons to do so, but the requirement is removed. Drawing simpler. Filing easier. Protection scope potentially broader.

The second change is the explicit endorsement of “for” as a connecting term. The guidance expressly confirms that claim language using the preposition “for” adequately connects a claimed design to an article of manufacture. Acceptable formulations now explicitly include: “Icon for a display screen,” “Graphical user interface for a computer,” “Projected interface for a computer system,” and “Virtual reality interface for a computer.” Compare the two examples the guidance highlights: “Paper stack icon for a computer display screen” is acceptable, tied to a manufacture. “Paper stack icon” alone is rejected, because without “for” language or a drawn screen, there’s nothing anchoring it to a physical article. Same drawing, opposite outcomes. The entire difference is a handful of words in the title.

Third, and most philosophically significant: AR, VR, holograms, and projections are now explicitly recognized as protectable. The Federal Register text is unambiguous: projected, holographic, virtual reality, and augmented reality designs of interfaces and icons for computer systems are recognized as potentially design-patent eligible. The USPTO drew on two key precedents. In re Hruby (1967) found a water fountain’s spray pattern patent-eligible as an article of manufacture. If a fountain’s spray qualifies, digital projections and holograms generated by computing systems should qualify analogously. Samsung v. Apple (2016) characterized “article of manufacture” broadly as “a thing made by hand or machine,” creating interpretive room for the USPTO’s current position.

Fourth, the guidance provides twelve worked examples that show how the new rules apply to specific fact patterns. Example 7 is particularly noteworthy: a projected keyboard interface cast onto a flat surface, with the computer device depicted in broken lines, is explicitly acceptable. The “projected keyboard interface for a computer” title and claim language does the work that the display screen drawing used to do. Example 5 serves as the counter-lesson: “Paper stack icon” claimed without any “for a computer” language is rejected as a disembodied image. These examples give practitioners a concrete set of templates and failure modes to work from.

Fifth, underlying all of these changes is a broader interpretive shift: the USPTO now treats the “article of manufacture” requirement as satisfied by a design’s relationship to a computer system, not just to a specific physical screen or device. The guidance notes that a “computer system” is an integrated combination of hardware and software, encompassing personal computers, handheld devices, servers, and more. This expansive reading has interesting implications for cloud-rendered interfaces, multi-device displays, and other scenarios where the traditional screen-centric model doesn’t map cleanly onto the technology.

The Two Conditions That Must Still Be Met for PHVAR Designs

It would be a mistake to read this guidance as opening the floodgates to unlimited design protection for anything that appears digitally. The USPTO maintained two important limiting conditions for projections, holograms, and VR/AR interfaces. First, the appearance of the interface or icon must be presented as separate from the computer, computer display, or computer system that generates it. The claimed design needs to have an independent visual existence. Second, “transient or disembodied” images remain outside the scope of protection. Ephemeral visual effects that don’t have stable, definable ornamental character don’t qualify.

In practice, these conditions mean applicants need to show their AR/VR/holographic designs with specificity and stability. A well-defined holographic UI that maintains consistent ornamental characteristics qualifies; an amorphous, constantly-changing visual effect probably doesn’t. The application drawings and description need to capture the design’s specific visual character in sufficient detail to satisfy both conditions. This is where careful drafting strategy becomes essential.

Strategic Implications: What IP Practitioners Should Do Right Now

The first action item is auditing pending applications. The guidance applies retroactively: it covers design patent applications filed before, on, or after March 13, 2026. If you have pending applications that received rejections based on the old display-screen requirement, those applications may now be salvageable through amendment or argument. Work with your prosecution team to identify these cases and assess the options promptly.

Second, reassess portfolio strategy for AR/VR products. If your company has been developing AR or VR interfaces and assumed that design patent protection wasn’t available or practical, that assumption needs to be revisited. Schedule a portfolio review with your IP counsel to identify designs that warrant new applications under the updated guidance. First-mover advantage in a new protection category can be significant.

Third, consider a dual embodiment filing strategy. Despite the relaxation of the display-screen requirement, several commentators, including John Hemmer of Morgan Lewis quoted in Law360, have noted that practitioners are likely to continue filing embodiments both with and without the display screen depicted. The reason is strategic hedging: the 2026 guidance is internally-issued examination guidance, not statutory law. Future administrations could tighten the rules; foreign prosecution in jurisdictions that haven’t made similar updates still requires compliance with their requirements; and federal court litigation could take positions on the article-of-manufacture question that differ from the USPTO’s current stance. For high-value designs, the added cost of filing both embodiments is worth the flexibility preserved.

Fourth, update claim drafting templates. If your firm or company has standard design patent drafting templates, update them to incorporate “for a computer/computer system/computer display” language as a default, and remove boilerplate requiring display screen depiction. Brief your team on the twelve worked examples, particularly Examples 7 (projected interface, acceptable) and 5 (standalone icon without “for” language, rejected).

Fifth, and most strategically interesting: consider filing for interfaces previously considered unprotectable. Projected keyboards, AR overlay menus, VR environment designs, holographic control panels: if your organization has been developing these, now is the time to build out your portfolio. The guidance opens the door to categories of designs that practitioners previously passed over as too risky under the old framework.

The Competitive Intelligence Angle: Who Stands to Benefit Most

Spatial computing platform companies (Apple, Meta, Microsoft, and Google) are the obvious first-tier beneficiaries. Each has invested heavily in spatial computing interfaces, and each has design teams producing UI work that previously sat in a legal gray zone. Expect a significant wave of design patent applications from these organizations as they formalize protection for interface designs that were previously disclosed without design patent coverage.

Enterprise AR vendors, companies like PTC (Vuforia), Scope AR, and Upskill, have been building spatial computing interfaces for manufacturing, field service, and training applications for years. A factory-floor AR overlay for assembly instructions, a heads-up display for field technicians, a spatial data visualization for quality control: all of these can now be protected as design patents, potentially creating competitive moats that weren’t previously available.

Perhaps the highest-stakes application domain is medical technology. Augmented reality is increasingly used in surgical navigation, radiology visualization, and medical training. Design patents for the interfaces through which surgeons interact with AR-guided systems, or through which radiologists navigate holographic medical imagery, could become strategically valuable in a sector where patient outcomes can depend on interface clarity and usability. The AEC (architecture, engineering, and construction) industry, which has broadly adopted AR for design visualization and construction management, similarly stands to benefit substantially.

How This Fits Into the Global Landscape of Digital Design Protection

The USPTO’s guidance doesn’t exist in a vacuum. A footnote in the guidance itself references India’s recently proposed amendments to its Designs Act, which would expressly provide design protection for GUIs, icons, and other virtual designs including AR/VR interfaces, citing a DPIIT document from January 2026. The United States is not leading a lonely charge; it’s part of a broader international movement toward modernizing design protection frameworks for the digital era.

That said, the global picture remains fragmented. The European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) and national European IP offices operate under their own frameworks with their own rules about digital design protection. China’s CNIPA has made some moves toward recognizing GUI designs more broadly but has its own requirements. Japan’s JPO has also been updating its approach. For companies with international IP portfolios, the March 2026 USPTO guidance is only the U.S. piece of a multi-jurisdictional puzzle. But the trend line across major IP offices is clearly toward greater recognition of digital and virtual designs, which makes building out comprehensive digital design portfolios a sound long-term investment regardless of jurisdiction.

What Remains Unclear: The Edge Cases That Need Watching

The guidance resolves several important questions but leaves others open. Dynamic vs. static interfaces: design patents capture a specific visual appearance, so how do examiners handle applications for AR/VR interfaces that are inherently dynamic, changing appearance based on context or user input? The “transient” exclusion may become a significant battleground here. Multi-device and distributed displays: if a design appears across multiple screens simultaneously, a scenario increasingly common in spatial computing, which device or system is the article of manufacture? The guidance’s broad reading of “computer system” may accommodate this, but the analysis isn’t spelled out.

Scope of protection is another concern. One practical issue with removing the display screen from drawings is that the scope of the resulting patent may be harder to bound. Traditional GUI design patents had an implicit spatial boundary: the screen. Without that boundary, the ornamental design needs to stand on its own visual characteristics, making claim scope more dependent on the details of drawings and description. Finally, prosecution history estoppel: as practitioners develop new drafting strategies under the 2026 guidance, they’ll need to be thoughtful about what amendments they make and what arguments they present to examiners, since these choices can limit infringement arguments in later litigation.

Summary: A Landmark Shift for the Spatial Computing Era

The USPTO’s March 2026 Supplemental Guidance is a landmark update to U.S. design patent practice. The display screen drawing requirement has been eliminated for applications meeting title-and-claim conditions. AR, VR, holographic, and projected interfaces are now explicitly recognized as potentially design-patent eligible. “For a computer/computer system” claim language is formally endorsed as satisfying the article-of-manufacture requirement. Twelve worked examples guide both examiners and applicants through the new framework. Two limiting conditions remain for PHVAR designs: visual separation from the generating computer, and non-transient/non-disembodied character. The guidance is effective immediately and applies to all pending and future applications. Public comments are open through May 12, 2026 under docket PTO-P-2026-0133.

For companies building products in the AR, VR, and spatial computing spaces, and for the practitioners who counsel them, this guidance changes the calculus for design patent protection. The technology moved ahead of the law for years. The law is now catching up. The work now is to figure out how to take advantage of the new framework strategically, before competitors do.

Sources: Federal Register: Supplemental Guidance (Docket No. PTO-P-2026-0133) / Morgan Lewis LawFlash / Womble Bond Dickinson / National Law Review / Fulton Jeang IP / Adafruit Blog