1. Both China and the United States protect designs in the patent law, which is called design patents.
2. The American design protection system protects only part of the design, in other words, only part of the design of the product can be protected. For example, only the handle of one cup is protected. Generally, it is required to describe the part to be protected with solid lines and other parts with dotted lines. At present, there is no local design system in China, which can only protect the appearance design of a complete product, such as a complete cup with a handle. At present, industry and academia are also calling on China to establish some design systems, because this is closer to the essence of design.
3. There are differences between China and the United States in the protection system for emerging protected objects, such as the design of GUI. The United States can protect products (or screens) as the carrier of GUI, and its protection objects include almost all GUIs displayed on the screen, except operating system interface, software interface, even game interface and wallpaper. When considering the scope of protection, cross-category protection can basically be achieved. For example, the design patent of GUI on mobile phone can be extended to TV.
China, on the other hand, involves the patent of GUI design, which protects "the overall design of GUI and product combination related to human-computer interaction and product functions except the game interface". According to the above requirements, generally speaking, products with device-specific interfaces, general operating system interfaces, software interfaces, web applications, icons, etc. Can be protected by design patents; However, products such as web page graphic typesetting, electronic screen wallpaper and on-off pictures cannot be protected by design patents. As for why there are the above restrictions, this is mainly because GUI must be protected under the current patent law framework, so it needs to be an integral product. Man-machine interaction and product function are the essence based on GUI. GUI is essentially the virtualization of the operation panel of the product entity, and it is precisely because of this that it is suitable to be protected by patent law. The plane layout design of website pages is essentially closer to the virtualization of information media such as newspapers, so it is more suitable for protection through copyright law.