The Federal Circuit has affirmed a summary judgment of no design patent infringement in a closely watched dispute between two makers of handheld massage devices.
The case, Range of Motion Products, LLC v. Armaid Company Inc., centred on whether Armaid’s competing Armaid2 product infringed Range of Motion’s design patent covering the appearance of its Rolflex device.
Both products feature curved arms that create a broadly similar overall shape, though the court ultimately found the visible differences significant enough to rule out infringement without a jury trial.
The Federal Circuit’s August 11, 2026 decision affirmed the district court’s summary judgment ruling, and the court subsequently denied rehearing en banc, leaving existing precedent intact.
The ruling reinforces that obtaining a design patent and successfully enforcing it are two quite different legal challenges for companies that rely on product appearance as a competitive advantage.
A key element of the decision involved the functional characteristics of the patented design’s arms, which the district court found served practical purposes, narrowing the ornamental scope of the patent before any infringement comparison was made.
The Federal Circuit upheld that analysis and rejected the argument that a feature shown in solid lines on a patent drawing must automatically be treated as ornamental for infringement purposes.
The court’s infringement framework continues to trace back to the Supreme Court’s 1871 decision in Gorham Co. v. White, under which the question is whether an ordinary observer would regard two designs as substantially the same.
Chief Judge Kimberly Moore, joined by Judge Reyna, dissented from the denial of rehearing en banc, arguing that Federal Circuit doctrine has shifted too much responsibility away from juries and toward judges in design patent cases.
Moore’s dissent challenges whether courts should decide functionality as part of claim construction when that determination may depend on evidence about alternative designs and product performance.
She also argued that asking whether designs are “plainly dissimilar” risks focusing decision-makers on individual differences rather than the overall impression an ordinary purchaser would form.
Judges Stoll and Stark also dissented without separate opinions, while Judges Cunningham and Hughes concurred in the denial, defending the panel’s approach as consistent with existing Federal Circuit precedent.
The concurrence emphasised that assessing substantial similarity necessarily requires weighing both similarities and differences, and that courts may properly resolve clear cases at the summary judgment stage.
For businesses, the decision carries practical consequences well before any litigation begins, particularly regarding which visual features are claimed in solid lines versus disclaimed with broken lines in design patent applications.
Companies are advised to review related utility patents and public statements about product performance, as both may later influence a court’s functionality analysis and narrow the scope of design patent protection.
A single design patent may leave room for a competitor to alter visible details while preserving much of a product’s overall look, making multiple design patents directed at different aspects of a product a stronger protective strategy.
For litigators, the ruling strengthens summary judgment as a potentially case-dispositive tool for accused infringers who can build a robust functionality record and highlight ornamental differences early in proceedings.
Patent owners will need to resist analytical approaches that break a design into isolated components, and should develop prior art records to explain why similarities between claimed and accused designs matter to the ordinary observer.
Range of Motion may seek Supreme Court review, which could give the Court a significant opportunity to clarify the proper roles of judges and juries in design patent infringement disputes.
The fundamental question the case leaves unresolved is whether, when reasonable people look at two products and reach different conclusions about their overall appearance, a judge or a jury should have the final word.