Judgment on GUI designs under the Indian Designs Act

Registrability of GUI designs under the Designs Act, 2000 Calcutta High Court | 2026:CHC-OS:69 | Judgment dated 09.03.2026 

This is a historic case of a judgment, given by Justice Ravi Krishan Kapur, the Calcutta High Court (IPR Division), which forms a combination of five statutory appeals, filed against the Controller of Patents and Designs, by NEC Corporation, Erbe Elektromedizin GmbH, Abiomed Inc. (two appeals), and TVS Motor Company Limited.  

The legal issue which was common in all appeals was whether a Graphical User Interface (GUI) would be considered to be a design that is capable of registration as one of the registrations under the Designs Act, 2000 (the Act). The Court responded in the affirmative and permitted all the appeals and it remanded the issues to be reconsidered by the Controller.  

Background and the general grievance of the appellants 

Both appellants had GUI-related design applications refused by the Controller on the same broadly similar grounds namely, that GUIs do not form an article according to section 2(a) of the Act; that GUIs are not applied by any industrial process or means according to section 2(d); that GUIs are not permanent because they only display when a device is turned on; and that GUIs are not produced or sold separately.  

The joint objection of the appellants was that the Office of Designs had made an unduly narrow and misunderstood reading of the statutory definitions, that it had misinterpreted the applicability of the Locarno Classification and that it had misconstrued the irrelevance of foreign precedents.    

Statutory framework: Sections 2(a) and 2(d)   

The Court thoroughly scrutinised the two underlying definitions: 

• Article as in Section 2(a) refers to any article of manufacture and any artificial or partly artificial and partly natural or any portion of an article which can be produced and sold separately.
• Section 2(d) identifies the meaning of design to be the characteristics of shape, pattern, ornament or configuration of lines or colours applied to any article, whether two-dimensional, three-dimensional or both by any industrial process or by any manual, mechanical, or chemical means, the characteristics in the finished article and which are looked at and not perceived by any other means than visual.   

Key legal issues and the Court's findings 

1. Does a GUI qualify as an "article"? 

The stance of the Controller was that just the display screen which contained the GUI is an article, and thus, the GUI per se cannot be registered. This was dismissed by the Court as a basic fallacy that involved insisting on physical presence. The Court concluded that the clause article in section 2(a) is generic and wide. The design and article are all different, free and independent, i.e., the design is applied onto an article, it does not necessarily need to be an article.  The article bringing a GUI can change depending on the case but can be the display unit, smartphone, tablet, or the dashboard of a car. With reference to Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. v. Apple Inc., 137 S. Ct.429 (2016), and Microsoft Corp. v. Corel Corp., Case No. 5:15-CV-06836-EJD (2018), where software was considered an article of manufacture per se, the Court held that the term required a purposive liberal, and broad meaning. 

2. Is a GUI "applied by any industrial process"? 

The Controller had adopted a narrow interpretation that only manual or mechanical or chemical processing should be regarded as an industrial process: thereby ruling out the digital processing of generating a GUI. This was a glaring error to the Court.   Section 2(d) has the word any before industrial process and it is evident that it is a broad, non-exhaustive interpretation. The adjectives manual, mechanical or chemical are only illustrative, but not exhaustive.   

3. Lack of permanence bar registration? 

One of the main arguments of the Controller was that GUIs do not exist between the turn-ons and the turn-offs of a device, and thus are not permanent and can not be registered. The Court strongly opposed such an argument. In section 2(d), permanent visibility is not mentioned anywhere. The definition was wrongly construed on the notion of permanence in all the impugned orders.  The law does not require that the features of the design should be permanently applied or permanently affixed to an article. Likewise, no statutory requirement of touch is present. The Court was assisted by Re: Hruby, 373 F.2d 997 where it was decided that permanence of a design is a matter of material it uses, and that many designs rely on extraneous circumstances to show themselves - a lampshade, for example, is not visible until the lamp is on.  

 4. Is a GUI "judged solely by the eye"?  

The Court considered the issue of the fact that GUIs are functional and thus cannot meet the requirement of being perceived as being judged by the eye only. It was believed that although a GUI can contain functional value, it can also contain design aspects with aesthetic considerations that cannot be determined by other elements that only function is required. The Controller had mixed up the useful nature of a GUI (how it works) with its aesthetical nature (how it appears).   

5. The Locarno Classification  

Having ratified the Locarno Agreement, India has revised its Design Rules in 2021, with Rule 10(1) incorporating the present edition of the Locarno Convention, which contains Class 14-04 (Screen Displays and Icons), which specifies that (under item 102529) Graphical user interface Graphical user interface [computer screen layout] will appear.  

The Court however explained that the Locarno Classification is merely administrative and does not necessarily offer a guarantee of registration. Classification facilitates a filing and search process and has no particular effect by itself in the generation or dissolution of GUI design protection.    

6. Dual protection Under Copyright and Designs Acts 

The Controller had claimed that GUIs were not a subject of protection under the Designs Act since they were already covered under the Copyright Act, 1957, as an artistic work and there could not be a protection on the same.  The Court dealt with this by saying that the overlap is itself dealt with by section 2(d) of the Designs Act which excludes any artistic work and section 15 of the Copyright Act by stating that any design registered under the Designs Act ceases to be subject to copyright protection and also ceases to be the case where the design is used industrially over 50 occasions.   

Conclusion 

The Court held no per se bar to GUIs registration on design registration by the Designs Act, 2000. IC (Integrated Circuit) has also taken the shape of a GUI, which inherently entails the use of iconography, layout, colour schemes, lines composition, and ornamentation - i.e. exactly the visual features being considered by the Act. GUIs are an aesthetic expression of layout, proportion, spacing, colour schemes, and icon design making a visual impression as judged by the eye. The blanket refusal made by the Controller was legally invalid.   

The Court also recognised inconsistency even in the Designs Office itself since the GUIs have been registered with previous cases (in connection to Siemens, Kneevoice, and LG) which further weakened the position of the Controller. All 5 appeals were permitted. The impugned orders were appealed and every case was appealed to the Controller to be heard afresh with a chance to be heard and taking the right legal framework.  

Read 2026:CHC-OS:69 | Judgment dated 09.03.2026 at: https://indiankanoon.org/doc/188297923/    

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