Justin DeAngelis Co-Authors CIPA Article on International Protection of GUI and Animated Designs
Justin DeAngelis, a partner in the Quarles & Brady Intellectual Property Practice Group, co-authored an article in the Chartered Institute of Patent Attorneys (CIPA) Journal section on the strategies and guidance related to international protection of Graphical User Interface (GUI) and animated designs.
The article examines recent guidance from the United Kingdom’s Intellectual Property Office and United States Property Office, alongside the European Union’s reformed design regime, and discusses how businesses can develop effective filing strategies for GUIs, animations and other digital designs across key jurisdictions.
An excerpt:
Modern graphical user interfaces (‘GUIs’) have come a long way from their early incarnations. Often, they were merely a crude visual layer, bridging the gap between the user and some core product or functionality. By contrast, in many modern contexts the interface may in effect be the product or may regardless be the product’s most distinctive visual feature: consider the animated confirmation after a payment, the head-up display and charging sequence in an electric vehicle, or the spatial overlay in an augmented-reality tool.
In acknowledgement of both this modern design landscape, and the associated increase in GUI filings, the United Kingdom Intellectual Property Office (‘UK IPO’) and the United States Patent and Trademark Office (‘USPTO’) have issued formal guidance which proactively updates the treatment of digital designs. Elsewhere, the EU has amended its designs framework and introduced procedural reforms.
In this article we consider the implications for digital design filing strategies in this new context, and broadly explore how design law approaches the protection of visual experiences that are dynamic, interactive, device-agnostic, and increasingly untethered from conventional screens.