Study On The Graphical User Interface Design Patent In China And America

With the rapid development of electronic industry, electronic terminals, such as mobile phone, tablet computer, has become a common supplies even indispensable in people’s daily life. Tens of thousands graphical user interfaces(hereinafter referred to as GUIs) applied to the terminals are developing rapidly.This era is an “experience is king” era, user is everything. In order to compete for customers, companies focus on GUIs, investing a lot of time and money to develop more competitive GUIs. This results in that new convenient and beautifu l GUIs emerge in an endless stream and the competition between enterprises is also becoming more and more serious. On one hand, Enterprise put a lot of time and money on developing more user-appealing GUIs, on the other hand, th ey hope that the GUIs they developed can be protected by intellectual property law. Design patent, besides its strong protection, has not the test of dichotomy of idea and expression, this is its advantage, so it has been widespread concern in the community.In the computer and electronic products industry, the new super sedes the old very fast. GUIs develop rapidly as the impetus of the industry whi ch it attached to, and new designs keeps emerging in an endless stream. As a result, the appearance design patent protection requirements is becoming more andmore strong.In the face of this reality, the State Intellectual Property Office responded through a revision of the ”Guidelines for Patent Examination” which delete that"product pattern powered by electronic" cannot be granted the patent right, and at the same time also exclude some kinds of GUI which shall not be granted patent right, which mainly involve a number of products having no concerns of human-computer interaction. Thus, appearance design patent open the gate to GUIs, even though there still has a part can not be authorized, it has been a very big change compared with the past.The Office issued ”Guidelines for Patent Examination” to guide the work of patent examination to make the corresponding adjustment if there is any proble m in practice. However, not like the guidelines, the law has the stability. As a re sult, the barrier for GUIs to get design patent right has been removed, but the patent law is still the same. There are always problems in patent law, such as the problem of the object. Especially in the face of the GUIs, a typical kind of part design, how to alleviate the conflict between design patent of GUIs and the existing system? How to improve the design patent protection of GUIs?This paper is to study the subject. In this way, the article structure arrangem ent is as follows.In addition to the introduction, this paper is divided into three chapters in accordance with the above ideas.The first chapter raises and analyzes questions, mainly about the conflict between design patent of GUIs, which is a typical kind of part design, and the all protection principle in China.The second chapter is to learn from the experience of design patent of America. The analysis comes from two perspective, one is the history of Amer ica’s design patent protection which grows out of nothing, the other one is the design of America’s design patent system. In the section of patent protection history, research and analysis come from the germination period, growth periodof wandering, the trial period and developing period. The system design section is mainly about that America does not make single design patent law and provides part design system.The third chapter proposes suggestions of perfect our design patent protect ion of GUI. They mainly come from two perspectives. One is to choose appro priate strategies, the other one is to choose alternative patterns of protection.