AIPLA Comments on India's Draft Guidelines for GUI and Icon Design Registration

Alexandria, VA. October 30, 2026 – The American Intellectual Property Law Association (AIPLA) submitted comments on India’s Draft Guidelines for Registration of Designs Relating to GUI & Icon etc. under the Designs Act, 2000 and Designs Rules, 2001. AIPLA welcomes the Draft Guidelines’ express recognition of GUIs and dynamic designs as a meaningful development toward providing greater certainty for contemporary digital designs. AIPLA recognizes that the Draft Guidelines operate within the Designs Act, 2000 as presently in force and require a GUI or icon to be associated with an article. Within that existing framework, AIPLA recommends that the Guidelines: (1) distinguish between the requirement that a GUI or icon be associated with an article and the requirement that the article be depicted in the representations, permitting applicants to omit the article where the title, statement of novelty, or other application materials adequately identify it; (2) accommodate computer-generated designs that are not displayed on conventional display screens, including designs presented through emerging display technologies; and (3) clarify whether successive frames of a dynamic, animated, sequential, transformable, or transitional GUI or icon may collectively define a single dynamic design and the scope of protection afforded to such designs.