Study On The Interlacing And Reforming Of The Copyright And Patent Protection Of The User Interface Of Software

Software user interface is a platform achieving human-computer interaction and an important part of computer software. It develops from early form of simple text and table to graphic at present, during its development there is not only the enhancement of software technology, but also major transformation from technology to design. In the current stage, it’s no longer simply a way of achieving software’s functions, but an important product for software developers to gain market recognition.Nowadays, the competition of software is about software product with user’s experience as the core, but no longer its function and technology. From the R&D investment of current software companies such as Apple, Google and Samsung, we know that software user interface has been an important method of the competition. Meantime, a research and development activity in the modern software user interface is full of creative labor, and software user interface has become more and more complicated. It has become an innovative product not only includes designers’ understanding, but also achieves a combination of psychology and design.For commercial interests, people’s recognition of software user interface grows deeper and deeper; hence the protection of software user interface begins. From unfair competition law and trademark law in the past, to copyright law later, then to patent protection in the background of patent expansion currently, the software user interface almost experienced all institution of intellectual property. The copyright and patent protection of software user interfaces becomes focus in especially repeated exploration of its nature.From the global perspective, the current protection of software user interface focuses on copyright and patent protection among which are interlacing to each other. Interlaced system has become a situation, which has a negative impact on software user interface’s development and the stability of intellectual property system. But in the evolving context of software user interface, the industry and Justice practitioners are constantly seeking regime reform. In contrast, subject to the low understanding, our country hasn’t given due protection to software user interface in the past. In recent years, the development of software user interface on mobile terminals represented by mobile phone, the competition and litigation among software enterprises such as apple, Google and Samsung attract more scholars and experts’ attention.Starting with elaborating software user interface’s essential characteristics, by reviewing the history of its copyright and patent protection, combining the discussion of its intellectual property protection in the core issue, this pater attempts to conclude the current intertwined software user interface protection system, to research the reform of its intellectual property protection in the future by analyzing the background of system design, competition of system design and operating conditions of foreign systems, in order to approach a certain role for the improvement of software user interface’s copyright and patent protection in our country. This paper is divided into five sections on the subject, namely five chapters:Chapter I, Firstly, it clarifies the basic connotation and denotation of the software user interfaces, and inducts and summarizes some of the features of the software user interface. On this basis, it demonstrates the legitimacy of intellectual property protection of software user interfaces from the theoretical and practical aspects by exploring the nature of the software user interface and combining with the current situation and trend of the development of world economy. Finally, it affirms the legitimacy of protecting the foreign software user interface from the empirical aspects on one hand, and lays the foundation for the study of the subsequent chapters through sorting out the history of the software user interface protection and the intellectual property protection.Chapter II, It defines the core issues of the copyright protection on software user interface through the study of the history of copyright protection of software user interfaces. Meanwhile, it analyses the core issues one by one, especially reflects the works, the ideological-expression dichotomy and the functional works, and then researches the fundamental problems of the copyright protection on software user interface.Chapter III, Viewing that the time of the patent protection of software user interface is still short, and most countries still stay in the stage of patentability, this chapter focuses on studying the patentability on the patent protection of software user interface, discusses the two different patent systems of appearance patents and invention patents, and has some basic research from the perspectives of the standardization issues.Chapter IV, The interlacing of the copyright protection and the patent protection of software user interface is the current system reality, so this chapter focuses on summarizing and discussing this reality, has analysis by combining with the results of a lot of basic problems discussed earlier, sorts out the relationship between the copyright and patent in the protection of software user interface, and then extends to discuss the status of the two systems on this issue. Chapter V, The interlacing of the copyright and the patent in the protection of software user interface is the current situation, but the situation is bound to have some changes. This chapter further demonstrates the advantages and disadvantages of the two systems on the object of protection through the economic analysis of the two systems working on the object of the software user interface, and researches on the trend of institutional changes combining with the basic theories of social reality and intellectual property. At the end, this chapter synthesizes the conclusions of the whole text, researches on institutional change by more in-depth study, and has a try on our system design ideas on this issue from the system building of the copyright and patent in the protection of software user interface.