Study On Design Patent Protection Of Graphical User Interface

GUI,short of Graphical User Interface,became well-known in Chinese public area from the year 2012 by the "patent war" between Apple Inc.and Samsung Inc..These series of lawsuits encouraged the world to focus on this particular object and had brought a lot of discussions.GUI was firstly designed in 1973,known to be a significant technology revolution in the 20th century.Comparing with traditional DOS system which needs command line operations,GUI uses menus,buttons,dialogs,and other elements to place the command line under the interactive page.The user could just simply click on the graphic to get the result.This convenient operation makes it much easier for the public to control the computer,and it also prompts the computer to be widely used and developed rapidly.In today’s world,there are rapid developments of the electronic products,a variety of new types of equipment emerge one after another.High-tech products such as mobile phones,tablets,smart TVs,and AI glasses are infiltrating all aspects of people’s daily lives.In the era of high-speed explosion of science,technology and information,it is difficult to control the carriers and channels for obtaining information because of their diversity and complexity.However,when the available content is basically the same,whether or not a computer software or a mobile applications can achieve commercial success depends to a large extent on the user’s experience with their interfaces.The more reasonable the layout of the interface,the more harmonious the color matching,and the more efficient the interaction,the evaluation and popularity of software and applications will be higher.Therefore,it is GUI that changes the fate of traditional software and application.A large number of commercial needs promote economic development,and vigorous economic developments will inevitably lead to urgent legal protection needs.Therefore,it is necessary to give a clear definition of GUI in the law.The 18th CPC National Congress clearly put forward that "science and technology innovation is the strategic support to improve the social productive forces and the comprehensive national strength." Moreover,the 19th Congress put forward higher goals for innovations and the new era has created a broader stage for these changes.It emphasized the need to adhere to the road of independent innovation with Chinese characteristics and the implementation of innovation-driven development strategy.This need impelled the country to allocate scientific and technological innovation,which made GUI one of the most controversial part.This thesis attempts to analyze the concept of GUI from the perspectives of the public,computer major,and law profession,and attempts to summarize the definition of a graphical user interface from a legal perspective.GUI had been in an awkward position in practice due to the Guidelines for Patent Examination 2010,which specified that the product pattern after power on cannot be granted rights of design patents.Facing this situation,the State Intellectual Property Office of the People’s Republic of China responded in 2014 with an amending statue.It deleted the first part of the third chapter,section 7.2,the last sentence of the third paragraph,which was "The patent of a product shall be permanent and visible,and not flickering or visible only under specific conditions",and also amended other relevant content.Thus,the appearance design patent opened its door to GUI.It got solemn protection eventually.However,in practice,this change had not brought about a substantial change.Judging from China’s "GUI First Case" and lawsuits between Huawei and Samsung regarding the GUI,due to lack of legislation,there is still a difference in the protection of the object in judicial practice.This thesis believes that the main dilemma for the protection of GUI in China are the conflicts between:1.the partial attributes of the GUI and the current application must be combined with the carrier,and;2.Since GUI design protection cannot be separated from the carrier protection according to the current regulations,the design must apply for exterior design patents for different devices even if the designs are exactly the same.These conflicts are the burden of corporations in intellectual property distributions and its high-efficiency development intentions.The GUI is a kind of design,and there are different protection modes in the world.Among them,the United States,the European Union,Japan,South Korea,and China’s Taiwan region have incorporated GUI into the scope of patent protection.These countries all have outstanding performance and protection needs in the electronics industry.Therefore,more comprehensive system construction is needed to protect the industrial development.Among them,the European Union,Japan,and South Korea all protect their designs in the form of a one-way law,while the United States and Taiwan in China include design designs in patent laws.Different legislative forms also lead to differences in the protection of the graphical user interface in various regions.China has not yet defined the protection of the graphical user interface design at the narrow legal level.In the future legislation,this article believes that it is possible to extract useful experience from the legislation in the United States and Taiwan.This thesis first studies and analyses current GUI protection model and legal impediments in China,then compared them with the legislation and juridical practice of GUI in other countries and regions in the world,such as U.S.,European Union,Japan and so on.The last part includes three main aspects:the analyses of partial design and the principle of patent protection in China,the necessity of optimization of protection strategy,the necessity of model optimization of protection strategy.This thesis believes that a local design protection system should be introduced in due course in light of the development of high-tech development in China.This system can fundamentally solve the current "product-on-product" status of GUI.After the introduction of the partial design system,when the designer of GUI is not the designer of the carrier to which it is attached,the current overall protection related regulations may be used;when the designer of GUI is not the designer of the carrier to which it is attached,that is,when the patent right of GUI is not the patentee of a computer or a mobile phone,it is unreasonable to rigidly require the carrier product to restrict the scope of protection of GUI.In that case,the thesis believes that when applying for.design patents,GUI carriers should be weakened in application documents.According to the results of current related authorized designs,this trend has gradually become mainstream.However,if GUI could be explicitly protected in legislation,it would give the rights holders a great incentive to innovate,and it would also promote the further development of China’s hi-tech industry.