UKIPO updates graphic symbols, interfaces and animated designs practice

The UK Intellectual Property Office (UKIPO) has issued a rare Designs Practice Notice, DPN 1/26, updating UK practice on registered designs relating to graphic symbols/icons and graphical user interfaces (GUIs), including where these types of designs incorporate animation or movement.  While the practice notice does appear to provide a significant update specifically to how the UKIPO will examine and approach animated GUI and sequence designs, the greater benefit will likely come from the additional guidance to applicants and representatives.  Questions remain though on how the updated practice will fit with the design systems around the world and what the day-to-day effect on UK design practice will be.

UK practice on GUIs, web interfaces and icon registered designs has been set and well understood for some time.  Fortunately, there is little to no change to practice on the static designs the practice notice addresses, which have faced few complexities and, like most other UK registered designs, have had a smooth and quick application process historically.  The same cannot be said about UK practice for designs directed to animations and sequences.  For these design types, the application process has often been fraught and subject to an interplay of multiple objections that can be opaque as to how to address and appear more restrictive than UK registered design law permits.

Recent UK practice on animated GUIs and sequences has relied on guidance developed across Europe codified in 2018 in the Common Communication on the Common Practice on the Graphic Representation of Designs (CP6).  However, this guidance has looked increasingly outdated with modern practice and capabilities.  This is due to animated GUI and sequence UK design applications being objected to, for example, for allegedly requiring user interaction, the transitions from one step to the next not being predictable enough, or the changes from one step to the next being too significant.

What is changing is that the UKIPO appears to be prepared to accept more significant differences between steps in a sequence or animation.  To stand the best chance of a design for an animated sequence being successfully registered, significant care will still be needed in the choice of images in a sequence.  However, additional options of making use of the title and written disclaimers to provide context is now acknowledged by the UKIPO as being beneficial.  These will be used by the UKIPO design examiners when assessing such designs, for example.

The UKIPO makes a point of stating that use of a written disclaimer has limits though. It is clear from the practice notice that heavy reliance on written material will not permit a design to be registered where the overall impression of a design as a unitary entity cannot be established from the images.

It is already known from the UKIPO 2025 consultation that UK registered design law will undergo some changes in the next few years.  This means that the updates this practice notice ushers in are an interim solution.  Indeed, some of the examples used in previous guidance on UK animated sequence designs have been maintained.

The EU design system will be updated shortly to accept non-static representations, and US practice has been recently been updated to remove some of the more stringent requirements on GUI and icon designs.  To keep up with developments in the design practices of these major jurisdictions, the UK registered design system will need a more significant update.

Nonetheless, the changes announced in the practice notice will modernise UK registered design practice in a tricky field.  This should ease some of the difficulties faced by those filing designs in the UK directed to some form of animation.

This makes the update to practice welcome, and it should provide a greater ability to secure registered protection for animated GUIs and sequences.  However, it will not resolve all the issues.  For example, the UKIPO is encouraging use of “as many views as possible” within the maximum of 12 per design.  This, along with the updated approach on title and written disclaimers, will not necessarily fit well with the requirements of other design systems around the world where a design may have been filed prior to being filed in the UK.  This means that strategic considerations and choices relevant to likely geographic filing extent will still need to be made ahead of a first filing to try to minimise and avoid issues when filing into the UK or filing elsewhere when starting in the UK.

If you would like to discuss UK designs and how to approach animated user interface and sequence designs in the UK, or have questions about design protection more generally, please contact your usual GJE attorney, or email gje@gje.com.