India reimagines GUI design protection

A significant ruling from the Calcutta High Court has steered the country towards aligning with international jurisprudence regarding graphical user interfaces, say Samta Mehra and Bisman Kaur of Remfry & Sagar.

In a landmark judgment delivered on March 9, 2026, the Calcutta High Court has ruled that graphical user interfaces (GUIs) are eligible for design registration under India’s Designs Act, 2000.

The ruling aligns India with global benchmarks—92% of jurisdictions already extend design protection to GUIs. The Intellectual Property Rights Division consolidated five appeals filed by NEC, Erbe Elektromedizin, Abiomed, and TVS Motor—all of which had seen their GUI design applications rejected by the Office of the Controller of Patents and Designs.

The common thread running through all five cases was a single question: can a GUI satisfy the criteria of a ‘design’ eligible for registration under the Act?

Background

A GUI is a form of user interface which allows users to interact with electronic devices through graphical elements such as icons, windows, menus, buttons, etc rather than typing text commands.

For years, India’s Designs Office had taken a rigid stance against GUI registration, relying on a narrow reading of the definitions of “article” (Section 2(a)) and “design” (Section 2(d)) under the Act.

The definitions read thus:

(a) “article” means any article of manufacture and any substance, artificial, or partly artificial and partly natural and includes any part of an article capable of being made and sold separately;

d) “design” means only the features of shape, configuration, pattern, ornament or composition of lines or colours applied to any article whether in two dimensional or three dimensional or in both forms, by any industrial process or means, whether manual, mechanical or chemical, separate or combined, which in the finished article appeal to and are judged solely by the eye; but does not include any mode or principle of construction or anything which is in substance a mere mechanical device, and does not include any trademark… or any artistic work as defined in the Copyright Act, 1957.

The position of the office rested on several grounds: that GUIs lack physical permanence since they are only visible when a device is switched on; that they are not applied to an article through a recognised industrial process; that they cannot be manufactured or sold independently; and that since GUIs may be protected as artistic works under the Copyright Act, 1957, granting them design protection would amount to impermissible dual protection.

The court rejected these arguments and preferred an expansive interpretation of statutory terms based on the principle of ‘updating construction’, which takes into account relevant changes and technological advancements that have occurred since an enactment was made.

Reinterpreting ‘article’ and ‘design’

The ‘design’ and the ‘article’, it was remarked, are distinct, independent and separate. The court emphasised that the definition of a ‘design’ under Section 2(d) is broad and tying the concept of a design exclusively to a physical or tangible article is a fundamental fallacy.

GUIs, icons, animations, and screen-based designs exist in digital form and would be permanently excluded from protection under such a narrow approach—an outcome that the legislature could not have intended.

On the ‘industrial process’ requirement, the court was equally clear. The word ‘any’ that precedes ‘industrial process’ in Section 2(d) signals a non-exhaustive interpretation and the enumeration of manual, mechanical, or chemical processes is illustrative, not limiting.

The process of rendering a GUI on a display surface—involving the manipulation of electronic signals through advanced hardware— squarely falls within the evolving concept of an ‘industrial process’. One of the most consequential findings in the judgment concerns the so-called permanence requirement.

The court held that Section 2(d) contains no such requirement, and a design does not need to be permanently visible to qualify for protection. It referred to the ‘test of noticeability’ in the Designs Manual, which acknowledges that internal features visible only during use may be registered, and to Ferrero’s application (1978 RPC 473) cited there as authority for construing “judged solely by the eye” to include features revealed only during use.

The court further held that the provision does not mandate physical touch, but only a sufficient association between the design and the article. The statutory intent is to prevent a design being registered in the abstract without association to the article.

Drawing on both domestic and foreign jurisprudence, the court affirmed that many designs depend on external conditions to become visible, a lampshade being a simple everyday example.

The correct legal test, therefore, is whether the design is visible when the article is put to its intended and normal use. Addressing the issue of whether the inclusion of GUIs in the Locarno Classification (incorporated in Rule 10(1) of the Indian Design Rules) guaranteed registration, the court clarified that the Locarno Classification may guide filing and classification, but cannot by itself confer registrability, since protection remains subject to Sections 2(a) and 2(d) of the Act.

Even so, India’s adoption of the current Locarno framework supports legislative and administrative intent to accommodate GUI protection.

Dual protection and copyright

This issue had two aspects: first, whether a GUI is a computer program and therefore cannot be registered as a design; and second, whether a GUI is an artistic work and therefore unregistrable as a design.

On the first point, the court clarified that although a GUI is produced by a computer program, a GUI is not itself a computer program in the sense of a literary work under the Copyright Act.

Re the second, it was observed that the statutory framework itself dispenses with overlap. Section 2(d) excludes artistic works from design registration, while Section 15 of the Copyright Act withdraws copyright protection once a design is registered or the 50-article production threshold is exceeded in the case of unregistered designs.

Per the court, once the visual features of a GUI are industrially applied to an article, it transitions from the realm of artistic work into that of a registrable design, and no double protection arises. However, a case-specific approach was emphasised—each application must be assessed individually against statutory requirements.

What comes next

All five impugned orders were set aside and the matters remanded to the Controller for fresh hearing. The decision is timely, since a Concept Note released by the government in late January on proposed amendments to India’s design law framework specifically addresses the issue of GUI protection.

The note recognises that while the 2021 amendments to the Designs Rules, 2001, aligned India with the current Locarno Classification, including Classes 14–04 and 32 covering GUIs, icons and other virtual designs, the substantive framework of the Designs Act, 2000, still remains anchored in physical products.

This results in uncertainty regarding the protection of GUIs and other virtual designs. It therefore proposes to modernise the definitions of “design” and “article” to expressly include virtual designs, animations, movement and transition, and to decouple design protection from the requirement of a physical carrier.

The definition of “article” may be revised to expressly cover items in physical or non-physical form, including GUIs, icons, graphic symbols, typefaces, augmented reality GUIs, and other virtual products provided under the Locarno classification.

A design would thus subsist regardless of whether it is embodied in a tangible object or materialises in a purely digital or virtual environment. In this context, the Calcutta High Court’s ruling does more than resolve the immediate appeals before it.

It provides a judicial framework that closely tracks the direction of legislative reform already under consideration. The well-reasoned judgment should steer the amendment discourse towards international jurisprudence and explicit recognition of design protection for GUIs in the country.

Takeaways

• GUIs are now eligible for design registration
• Clarity on ‘permanence requirement’
• Court stresses case-specific approach

Samta Mehra is a partner and trademark chair at Remfry & Sagar. She can be contacted at: samta.mehra@remfry.com

Bisman Kaur is of counsel at Remfry & Sagar. She can be contacted at: bisman.kaur@remfry.com