In December 2025, the China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA) officially issued the Guidelines for Patent Applications of Product Designs Involving Graphical User Interfaces (hereinafter referred to as the "Guidelines"). As the first unified national normative document for graphical user interface (GUI) design patent filings in China, it resolves long-standing inconsistencies in examination practice, systematically clarifies statutory provisions, uniform examination standards and application precedents, and delivers end-to-end operational rules for the full filing process. Drawing on China’s current design patent preliminary examination practice and common filing defects of overseas applicants (especially those from Europe and the United States), this introduction breaks down the Guidelines’ core rules and key examination points, to help applicants standardize filing preparations and mitigate office action or rejection risks. The full English translation of the Guidelines is attached for detailed reference.
1. Eligible Protected Subject Matter
The Guidelines define three core statutory eligibility criteria for protectable GUI designs, which form the threshold for all valid applications.
A GUI design must first be bound to a specific product carrier. Unlike the U.S. design patent system, which allows protection for GUI designs independent of a specific product, pure GUI patterns without a defined carrier (such as smartphones, computers, or smart electronic devices) are not eligible for protection under China’s Patent Law. Applicants must clearly specify the product and application scenario of the GUI – for example, "mobile payment GUI for smartphones" or "operation control GUI for industrial electronic devices". Standalone GUI filings without a defined product carrier will be directly rejected in the preliminary examination stage.
The second core requirement is that the GUI must be functionally linked to human-computer interaction. Non-interactive display patterns, including static wallpapers, boot screens, and pure graphic-text web page layouts with no interactive function, fall outside the scope of protection. This rule applies equally to partial GUI designs, which must also support interactive operations such as clicking, sliding, or gesture control to meet the eligibility standard.
Finally, game interfaces are fully excluded from protectable subject matter. Neither full game scenes, nor partial elements such as in-game functional modules, parameter setting windows, or operation panels, qualify for design patent protection – regardless of whether the application is filed for the whole interface or a partial design.
2. Core Rules for Partial GUI Designs
Partial GUI protection is a central focus of the Guidelines, which establish clear, standardized rules to address the historically issues of these applications in China’s examination practice.
A critical threshold for partial GUI filings is that the claimed design must form a complete and independent design unit. The portion for which protection is sought must create a visually independent area with clear boundaries and cohesive design logic; randomly intercepted fragments of a larger interface, with no standalone design integrity, will not be accepted by examiners.
Beyond structural integrity, the partial GUI must present obvious differences from conventional designs. China operates a preliminary examination system for design patents, under which CNIPA reviews whether the design is obviously inconsistent with Article 23, Paragraph 2 of the Patent Law, which requires a design to be distinct from prior designs or combinations of prior design features. Overly simplistic partial GUIs – such as a single rounded rectangular button, or a linear arrangement of generic components – are frequently rejected for failing to meet this requirement. To mitigate this risk, applicants should incorporate unique design elements (such as proprietary textures, asymmetric contours) or closely integrate the design with exclusive interactive functionality to meet the statutory "new design" requirement.
The Guidelines also set out optimal filing strategies for different use cases. If the design points lie solely in the GUI (with no new design in the carrier product itself), filing as a partial design is recommended. For partial GUI designs applicable to all types of electronic devices, applicants may file the application without depicting the product carrier, with the product name specified as "electronic device".
3. Filing Rules for Multiple Designs & Compliance Requirements
The Guidelines also standardize rules for multiple design filings and mandatory compliance requirements, which represent the most frequent sources of defects in overseas applicants’ filings.
For multiple design filings, the number of similar GUIs for the same product in one application shall not exceed 10. Sequential "vertical" interfaces – that is, interfaces that follow a sequential jump flow to deliver a single unified function – may be included in a single application via change state views. By contrast, "parallel" interfaces (same-level interfaces that deliver separate, independent functions) must be filed as separate applications, unless they meet the similarity standard for multiple design filings.
On compliance mandates, the Guidelines set four non-negotiable requirements: main views and change state views shall not include "content screens" (non-design elements such as video frames or product images in shopping interfaces), which may only be included in reference views with corresponding annotations, with an exception for content screens strictly necessary to demonstrate the GUI’s core function, provided the brief description explicitly states this content is not part of the claimed design; any maps included in the GUI must use standard Chinese maps compliant with national regulations; formal permission certificates must be submitted for the use of trademarks, portraits, or other third-party proprietary content; and privacy information in reference views must be blurred to comply with China’s data protection rules.
Concluding Remarks
The Guidelines bring unprecedented clarity and uniformity to China’s GUI design patent prosecution process, which has historically been marked by inconsistent examination standards. For overseas applicants seeking GUI design protection in China, accurately understanding and complying with the rules set out in the Guidelines is fundamental to avoiding procedural defects, streamlining prosecution, and securing stable, enforceable intellectual property rights.
