Since the implementation of new revised Patent Examination in May 1, 2014, the enthusiasm of the GUI application is high.  The GUI applications exceeded 2,500 cases on May, in which more than 1,400 cases on the single day of May 1.  The enterprise company accounted for 70% from the local applicants, whereas the cellphone or the computer that contains GUI has totally accounted for over 80% from the production field.  Director Lin, Xiaoyue, Design patent Examination Department of SIPO found that some applications were defective, and he gave some following advices on the GUI protection which the applicants and the patent agencies are concerned.

     On the whole, the most common problem in the patent filing is that expression of GUI design is unclear and inaccurate, missing the necessary drawings or the description of the GUI application.  To avoid the unclear expression, the applicant and the patent agency must carefully review the drawings and the description of GUI before filing the application to make sure that the whole details is sufficient. 

      Another prominent issue is related to dynamic image.  Many GUI applications have defectives in the dynamic images  You can submit GUI application with dynamic images only in case of you want to protect all interface views and the visual effect of dynamic switching.

     However, to ensure that the patent application can be granted and the design can be effectively protected, the applicant should have a brief description of the design, use, interactive method and other information through the drawings or photographs as far as possible for the convenient of the examiner’s judgment, and should avoid uncertainty in the judgment of the patent object. 

     In order to obtain greater scope of the protection, some patent attorneys and applicants submitted only the layout of the interface without specific elements of the design during the application.  However, the layout is a part of the overall interface design and this seems like to request for part protection, which is contrary to the entirety protection principle of the present Patent Law and expresses the interface design unclearly.  Therefore, it is not acceptable to file the layout design in combination with the product. 

     The text of the GUI application should be clear which can refer to the text of product’s packaging . Although the present Design patent does not protect the tone or the meaning of the words, the words are the most important part of the interface design.  Furthermore, different font, size and paragraph arrangement will affect the overall visual view.  So there is no need to delete the concrete words to satisfy the clear expression. 

     Under the present examination principle of entirety protection of the Design patent, the entirety observation and synthetic judgment is still the main principle of the multiple Design patent application.  That is to say when apply multiple designs in one application, the GUI design should be combined with the same or the similar product.  In fact, it’s wrong that part of the application uses the same GUI design combined with different products in order to maximize the scope of protection.  It’s acceptable to apply for multiple applications of similarity GUI Design in case of the entity products are similar, on the contrary, the examiner will request the applicant to divide the application.