The Dilemma of China's GUI Design Patent Protection from the "First Case of GUI Patent"

2016Year 5In January, Beijing Qihoo Technology Co., Ltd. sued Beijing Jiangmin Technology Co., Ltd. to the Beijing Intellectual Property Court. Qihoo Technology Co., Ltd. believed that the GUI in Jiangmin Technology software interfaceThe design infringed its design patent, and the patent number infringed was "CN302993266S" and the patent name was "Computer with Graphical User Interface". Qihoo Technology requested the court to order the defendant to stop the infringement, eliminate the impact and compensate 5 million yuan for economic losses.

2017Year 12Month 25The Beijing Intellectual Property Court ruled to reject all the plaintiff's claims. The reasons for the rejection of the Beijing Intellectual Property Court's decision are mainly as follows: First, the Beijing Intellectual Property Court emphasized that when there is no explicit determination rule for the identification of GUI design patent infringement, the existing design infringement rules apply. That is, the scope of design patent protection must consider not only design elements, but also product elements, product elements and design elements are based on what is shown in pictures and photographs. In the patent involved in Qihoo Technology, what is to be protected is a computer with a graphical user interface, and in the picture of the patent, six views of the computer are given. Therefore, when determining the scope of patent protection, the computer should be taken into account, not just the graphical interface. Secondly, the Beijing Intellectual Property Court held that the accused infringement is the act of the defendant providing the accused infringing software to the user, rather than selling, manufacturing, promising to sell or importing products of the same or similar category as the patent involved, because the accused infringing software does not belong to the category of design products, so even if the user interface of the accused infringing software is similar or even the same as that of the patent involved, the software also does not fall within the scope of patent protection. On these two grounds, the Beijing Intellectual Property Court rejected all the plaintiff's claims.

After the Beijing intellectual property judgment came out, it caused an uproar. Many people put forward different opinions. The main points of dispute include the following:(1）GUIThere is an essential difference between appearance patents and ordinary appearance design patents. GUI appearance designs are generally concentrated in electronic products. After the power-on conditions are met, human-computer interaction or product functions are realized. In the sales process, profits can be made by selling only the GUI design instead of bundling products. However, ordinary appearance designs cannot produce interactive effects and have no dynamic patterns, and the design cannot be sold separately from the product. Therefore, in the interpretation of "products containing graphical user interface" should consider the product elements, does not mean that the infringer not only to meet the manufacturing, promise to sell, sell, import of similar or similar products, but also in the design of the product is the same or similar. On the contrary, as long as the patentee proves that the alleged infringing design is the same or similar to the design of the patent in question, the court has reason to believe that the alleged infringing design is applied to the same or similar product of the patent in question. Therefore, such an act also constitutes an infringement. (2) In the judgment, the accused infringement determined by the court refers to the defendant's act of providing the accused infringing software to the user, but ignores the fact that the accused infringing software must be installed on the computer product; The court separated the accused infringing software from the product, so that the accused infringing software did not fall within the scope of design products, and determined that the accused infringing software did not fall within the protection scope of the patent involved, in fact, it narrows the scope of GUI appearance patent protection and increases the difficulty of patent rights protection in practice. (3) When determining the scope of protection of a GUI design patent, the main consideration should be whether the accused infringing product is the same or substantially the same as the key frame view and the change state diagram in the GUI design patent text. Even if the GUI appearance patent is attached to the product, the determination of the substantive GUI content should not be limited to the product itself when defining the scope of protection. In the process of determining infringement, the original intention of setting up the GUI design patent should be returned, and the GUI design should no longer be limited to the product hardware itself, but should be promoted to the object that can be protected as the design alone. Otherwise, the patentee of the GUI design spends time and energy to obtain the patent right, but the protection is very small in the actual operation, which is bound to reduce the enthusiasm of the GUI design to apply for the patent right, leading to the formation of a vicious circle, which is even more unfavorable to the protection of the GUI design. (4) In practice, GUI design applications are generally made by software companies, which rarely involve the manufacture and sale of hardware. According to the judgment of Beijing Intellectual Property Court, the possibility of GUI design infringement is greatly reduced.

Of course, the Beijing Intellectual Property Court's decision is also understandable. Under the current system, the GUIDesign applications generally require a combination of hardware products to apply for design patents, so many of the GUI we seeThe names of the appearance design are "computer with GUI", "mobile phone with GUI", "mobile device with GUI", "terminal with GUI", etc. According to the judgment principle of patent infringement, the principle of full coverage and the principle of equivalent infringement, when a design infringes the patent right, it must meet the two conditions of "GUI design" and "matching hardware" at the same time. On the basis that there are no other regulations, the court wants to determine that Jiangmin Technology infringement is also not in compliance with relevant laws.

Therefore, want to solve the current GUIThe dilemma of design patent protection needs to be modified by the relevant provisions of the patent law, and the design infringement determination rules are issued. In addition, it is necessary to introduce relevant regulations to clarify the GUIThe scope of the object, the rights boundary of the GUI design patent and the provisions of damages. I believe that in the near future, GUI design patents can be better protected.

It is worth mentioning that at present, Qihoo Technology's patent involved in the case has been declared invalid by the Patent Reexamination Board. The main reason for invalidity is that Qihoo Company has already disclosed the contents of the patent before applying for the patent. Therefore, the contents of the patent are not novel and creative. Although Qihoo Technology argues that it is an internal test version, the reexamination board has not adopted this opinion. This also reminds those companies that intend to apply for a patent that the content of the patent must be applied for before it is disclosed, otherwise the patent rights obtained will be in a very unstable state.