Ask most people what "design protection" means in law, and they'll picture a chair, a bottle, maybe a pair of shoes: something you can actually hold. For twenty-five years, that's roughly how India's Designs Act, 2000 was read too. Protection for the shape, pattern or ornamentation of a physical article, not much room for the digital world.
On March 9, 2026, the Calcutta High Court quietly closed that gap. The Designs Office had spent years rejecting design applications for something almost everyone touches daily: the graphical user interface, the screen you look at, tap and swipe. That ruling landed in the middle of an even bigger story, a government proposal released weeks earlier to rewrite the Designs Act more or less from scratch.
Put together, it's the most significant stretch for Indian design law since the Act itself was passed. Here's what actually changed, and why it's worth understanding whether or not you've ever filed a design application in your life.
The Case That Settled a Decade of Guesswork
For years, applicants trying to register the look of a screen, an icon, a dashboard, a touchscreen layout, ran into the same wall at the Designs Office. A GUI is only visible when a device is switched on, the reasoning went, and it's built through software rather than an industrial process, so it can't really be a "design" applied to an "article" at all. Company after company was refused on that basis, going back to a 2023 attempt by UST Global that the Calcutta High Court sent back for reconsideration without ever fully settling the underlying question.
That question returned to the same court, this time in a batch of five appeals from NEC Corporation, ERBE Elektromedizin, Abiomed and TVS Motor Company, spanning electronics, medical devices and automotive dashboards. Justice Ravi Krishan Kapur's answer was direct. Nothing in the Act requires a design to be visible at all times to count. A lampshade means nothing until the lamp is switched on, the Court noted. A watch face means nothing until it's worn. A GUI is no different: the "article" is the screen it's applied to, whether that's a phone, a dashboard or a diagnostic device, and the visual impression it creates through layout, icons and colour choices is exactly what design law was built to protect.
The Court's order didn't hand out registrations on the spot. It sent the applications back to the Designs Office with clear instructions: examine GUIs on their own merits, case by case, and stop relying on the old reasoning. What it did settle, with real clarity for the first time, is that the door is open.
The Bigger Rewrite Already Underway
The GUI ruling landed on top of a much larger project. In late January 2026, the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade released a concept note proposing the broadest set of changes to the Designs Act since it replaced the old 1911 law. The stated ambition, echoing the government's own "Design in India, Design for the World" framing, is to bring Indian design law in step with how design actually works today: filed globally, increasingly digital, and commercially fast moving.
| Proposal | What it would change |
| Hague Agreement | Acceding to the Geneva Act, 1999 would let Indian applicants seek design protection across dozens of countries through a single international filing, instead of filing separately in each one. |
| Riyadh Design Law Treaty | Streamlined formalities for filing, renewals and recording changes of ownership, aligned with a treaty most major design offices already follow. |
| The "5+5+5" term | The current 10-plus-5-year term would become three renewable five-year blocks, still capped at 15 years, letting owners drop protection on designs that stop being commercially relevant. |
| Deferred publication | Applicants could delay publication of a design for up to 30 months, keeping it confidential until they're ready to bring it to market. |
| Digital and virtual designs | Protection for digital and virtual designs written directly into the statute, rather than left to case-by-case litigation. |
| Sharper penalties | Up to ₹50 lakh for a first instance of wilful infringement, scaling higher for repeat offenders. |
None of this is law yet. A concept note is the government thinking out loud, consulting industry before drafting an actual amendment bill, so the specifics can still shift. But the direction is clear enough that anyone who designs anything for a living should be paying attention.
Design Protection, in Plain English
It's easy to mix up which IP right protects what, so here's the short version. A patent protects how something works. A trademark protects a name, logo or other badge of origin. Copyright protects original creative expression such as writing, music or art. A design registration protects none of that. It protects how something looks: its shape, configuration, pattern or ornamentation, judged purely by the eye rather than its function. That's why a chair's silhouette, a bottle's contour, and now a screen's layout can all fall under the same right, while the mechanism inside the chair or the code inside the app is a different right's job to protect.
Why This Should Matter to You
You don't need to be a company filing five simultaneous appeals to have a stake in this. If you design products, apps, packaging or interfaces for a living, the GUI ruling is a real answer to a question that sat unresolved for years: the look of your screen may be worth protecting the same way the look of a physical product always has been. If you run a business that exports or sources internationally, the proposed Hague accession would eventually mean one filing instead of a dozen. And if you simply follow how India's innovation economy is evolving, this is a useful marker of intellectual property law catching up to a world where a huge share of what gets designed never touches a factory floor at all.
For now, the GUI ruling is binding precedent, and the Designs Act amendments are still a proposal working their way toward a bill. Both are worth watching closely over the months ahead.
A rulebook written for teapots and bottle caps is finally being asked to describe a screen. How well it manages that will shape what gets protected in India for the next generation of designers.
BRB Legal's IP & Technology desk tracks developments like these as they unfold.
This article is for general information only and does not constitute legal advice. For advice on a specific situation, please consult a qualified professional.
This article is for general information and states the law as at 8 September 2026. It is not legal advice. For advice on your situation, contact the firm. Published by BRB Legal.
