Design Patents
Intellectual property: protecting your inventions and ideas--part 1 of 3
Design patents are the most common because they protect the waysomething looks as opposed to the way it operates. For example, ifyou designed a tissue-box holder that looks like a volcano, you maybe able to get a design patent (you don't claim to haveinvented tissue-box holders, just the look of the tissue-box holderyou designed).
Excerpted from Starting a Home-based Business