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ARTICLE · 24 JUNE 2024

Navigating GUI Design Legalities: Design vs. Copyright Laws

J.P. Associates
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Graphical User Interface (GUI) is an interface program that allows users to interact with electronic devices. Examples include the windows, icons, menus, and buttons seen on laptops, computers, and smartphones.

IndiaIntellectual Property
J.P. Associates
J.P. Associates
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Graphical User Interface: An Overview

Graphical User Interface (GUI) is an interface program that allows users to interact with electronic devices. Examples include the windows, icons, menus, and buttons seen on laptops, computers, and smartphones. Graphical User Interface provides visual representation of the available options and actions that a user can take, enabling interaction by clicking on these graphic elements. It is a powerful way to differentiate products and enhance user experience. Thus, companies invest significantly in GUI development, making appropriate IP protection essential.

Protection of GUI: Design or Copyright

The debate around finding an Intellectual Property suitable for safeguarding GUI designs dates back to the 1990s. Theoretically, both Copyright Law and Design Law can provide IP protection to GUIs. The scope of protection provided by copyright is limited as it protects only exact or near exact copies, allowing subsequent developers to

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When an artificial intelligence system is trained on copyrighted news content, and later answers a user’s question using what it learned, has the law been broken? On 24th July 2026, the Delhi High Court answered that question, at least for now. In ANI Media Pvt. Ltd. v. Open AI OpCo LLC, Justice Amit Bansal declined to grant an interim injunction against OpenAI, holding, on a prima facie, interim stage view, that the company’s use of ANI’s news content to train its large language models (“LLMs”) falls within the fair dealing exception under Section 52(1)(a) of the Copyright Act, 1957
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