Improvement Of GUI Design Infringement Judgment Rules

On December 25 th,2017,the Beijing Intellectual Property Court adjudicated on the first patent infringement case about graphical user interface design in China-Qihoo v.Jiangmin,according to the current GUI design infringement determination rules in China,the first step of infringement needs to be judged Whether the patent and the alleged infringing software are identical or similar in the product category,and the court finds that the alleged infringing software does not belong to the product,so the two may not constitute the same or similar in the product category.Therefore,the infringement is not established.The judgment result of this case aroused lively discussion,and exposed the limitations of the GUI design product carrier and the general dilemma of the comparative elements under the current rules.With the rapid development of technology,the key competitive point in the development of electronic products at present is the innovation of GUI design,which has a significant impact on product design and can even play a decisive role.In contrast,the United States holds that computer-generated icons must be combined with industrial products,and the definition of products can be broadly interpreted when focused on design factors;the Europe holds that products only play a role in auxiliary examination and convenient classification,and the infringement comparison shall only contains the design factors;Driven by the industrial interests,South Korea expands the range of products and holds that GUI must appear on the liquid crystal display of the product.Based on the existing identification rules of GUI design infringement in China,combined with the extraterritorial research and the development trend of GUI industry,this paper proposes some ideas to reconstruct the traditional “same or approximate” classification of the products under the existing rules.Firstly,interpret the product carriers broadly,weaken the classification of products and consider software products as carriers.Then take the innovative features of GUI into consideration and revise the infringement identification rules of “integral comparison and comprehensive identification”.Finally,raise the revised rules of infringement comparison to the legal level.Therefore,the existing problems of the GUI design infringement determination rules in China are solved.