An approach for designing a quad-band bandpass filter is presented. The dual-plane structure composed of both a microstrip and a defected ground structure (DGS) slot is employed to obtain quad-frequency responses. The slot, with interdigital shape in the DGS, is designed to obtain dual-frequency responses and transmission zeros are introduced to split both passbands into two. The equivalent-circuit model is derived for the filter. A filter with four passbands centring at 1.74, 2.09, 2.75 and 3.14 GHz is shown with a stopband attenuation greater than 20 dB over the frequency range from 3.38 to 7.70 GHz.