Design patents are the US version of a registered industrial design. It only stops competitors from copying your design, and doesn't harm innovation at all, and may actually encourage it. The shape of an akg headphone, a coke bottle, nike shoes, swatch watches, macbook, ps3, tic-tac box, bic pen, a ferrari... This is what stops chinese factories from
legally selling exact copies (visually at least) of everything you know.
Did you read the link you pointed to? It says this Article establishes yet another basis for policy makers to free design patent standards from the unworkable and inappropriate nonobviousness requirement. If I sell a computer that is just a small completely clean white cube, which no one else does, is it an obvious design?
