4 judgments of the Delhi High Court, the Bombay High Court and 1 other court applying Designs Act s.2(d), from 2023–2026, each with a headnote by BRB Legal.
Interim injunction granted restraining the defendant's GRACE series of ceiling fans as identical or deceptively similar to the plaintiff's registered design for its AEON series. On the contest over who launched first, the Court found that retail availability of the defendant's product began only on 6 April 2026, after the first hearing on 30 March 2026, and that the defendant produced nothing beyond photographs in retail stores to establish an earlier launch date. The plaintiff had approached the Court before the actual launch and could not be prejudiced.
Interim application dismissed in a registered design action over ceiling fans. Judged through the eye of the purchaser, no obvious similarity appeared: the curved blade and the Z shaped shank claimed as distinctive of the suit fan were absent from the impugned fan, and when both fans were produced in court no similarity was visible that would constitute piracy. The passing off claim failed separately because the chartered accountant's certificate relied on for goodwill covered six models or brands rather than the suit fan alone, so no goodwill or distinctiveness in the particular get up was established.
Five appeals concerning graphical user interfaces allowed together, the Court holding that the authorities had failed to apply the correct legal tests to GUI design applications. It noted a WIPO survey finding that 92 per cent of jurisdictions already protect GUIs under design law, and comparable positions in the European Union, United Kingdom, Australia, Hong Kong and the United States, and observed that the definitions of design, article and industrial process require clarification so that GUIs are recognised as products of industrial design activity, which would also align India with the Hague Agreement and the Riyadh Design Law Treaty. Pending such clarification by the legislature or the Controller, the Court held that nothing prevents GUIs being registered case by case under sections 2(a) and 2(d), provided they are properly identified with an article and the design elements are not purely function driven.
Allowed and remanded. A graphical user interface is registrable as a design. The court held that the claimed GUI is a two-dimensional design whose novelty can be judged by the eye as soon as the device is turned on, with no need to touch the device, and that it is applied to the article by an industrial process within section 2(d): a developer writes source code which creates the GUI, that code is embedded in micro-controllers and micro-processors, and it is displayed on screen by illuminating pixels through electronic means. The court followed Re Apple Computer Inc.'s Design Applications and K.K. Suwa Seikosha's Design Application, and noted that registrations granted in the USA and the European Union, though not binding, had not even been adverted to in the refusal.
