From Like Buttons to Message Bubbles: The UX Designs You Can’t Use

Designing a new user interface in 2019 is harder than you think

Credit: Soloma_Poppystyle/iStock/Getty Images Plus

You’re in the business of selling pizza. Everyone loves pizza. It’s fast and easy. The demand is high. It’s the classic American staple. But you’ve got a ton of competitors, marketing is tougher than you thought, rent is getting higher, the app designs are stale, every week is a 52-week low, and it’s getting harder to differentiate—you know, the typical stuff. So, you think to yourself, “I need to do something nobody has ever done before. Something new, something progressive.” You start brainstorming ideas and come up with a brilliant one that sounds something like, “So then you could view the pizza details and swipe right if you like it and swipe left if you don’t. Kind of like Tinder, but for pizza!”

Yeah, no. You cannot design something like that, because Tinder has a patent on the interaction of swiping right to like and left to dislike. “Okay, okay, fine,” you say to yourself. “That is the hallmark of its entire app, so then just get rid of the swipe feature, and we’ll make a minimum viable product (MVP) solution of just having a ‘like’ and ‘dislike’ button at the bottom.” Tough luck, kid. Tinder has a patent on that, too.

Designers are always looking at how other companies solve similar design challenges and use them as inspiration for ideas. It’s a fun (and sometimes not so fun) process that can even cause others to criticize you for not doing enough research if you don’t look at a competitor’s solutions. For designers and nondesigners alike, it’s important to understand which designs are off-limits for use as inspiration. Companies take a lot of time to think up product-defining UI elements, so it makes sense that they don’t want others copying something they’ve spent a lot of energy creating. These UI features can be as detailed as Apple’s iPhone X home-button-less navigation, for which it filed a giant patent that’s still in review, or as small as Facebook’s “like” icon.

General patent questions

How long does it take to patent a design?

It can take one to two years for design patents and up to five years for utility patents.

How much does it cost to make a design patent?

The ballpark overall cost for a design patent is $2,000 to $3,000. Unlike other types of patents, yearly maintenance fees are not required. If you’re a big company, this is pretty cheap.

How long do design patents last?

All of the patents listed in this article last about 15 years.

How do I find patents?

Conveniently, you can find them on Google Patents, which indexes them from more than 100 patent offices around the world. You can search by type, keywords, or company, because patents are all public material. If you ever have the time, it’s a good idea to look through patents once in a while.

I’m looking at the patents. How do I read this shit?

According to UpCounsel, “the only section in a patent that is legally enforceable” is written in the claim, which is limited to one sentence. For non-design patents, it makes sense to hit up the claims section first. In design patents, that one sentence is often vague and reads something like, “The ornamental design for a display panel of a programmed computer system with a graphical user interface, as shown and described,” which is not very helpful. Therefore, the parts to pay attention to are the solid lines in the attached drawings. The dotted lines are just supporting details to show you what environment it appears in, like if it’s mobile or desktop. The dotted lines can also be contextual, which helps you know, for example, that something is scrolled or if it specifically appears in a messaging app. The title will also tell you if the patented item is an animation or a graphical interface. Unfortunately, patents usually don’t include a description of how the thing is supposed to work—sometimes a bit of guessing is involved.

TL;DR for patent rules

You can patent:

Icons

Static screens (a certain UI pattern)

Animated interactions (such as a swipe interaction)

An existing function that adds your own ornamental twist to make it sufficiently unique

Something extremely specific, such as what text goes on what part of the screen and the size of the image. But it’s better practice to make it more fluid so that when you want to update your designs, they will still fall within the patent constraints.

Multiple features on the screen separated into multiple patents. In Tinder’s example, the company has a patent for the swipe feature and a separate patent for the placement of the circular “like” and “dislike” buttons, even though they appear on the same screen.

You cannot patent:

Something purely for function. For example, you can’t patent a digital thermostat reader, but you can patent a digital thermostat reader taking the shape of a circle with rotating clock controls, such as Nest’s design. This means someone else could still design a digital thermostat reader that takes the shape of a triangle.

The use of color

Sometimes you can find a company’s hidden plans while looking at patents. I found a couple of blueprints for designs that are not yet in a product (if it ever does at all). Which makes sense, because the insurance for a patent lasting 15 years costs less than one year of auto insurance. To a company, that’s essentially free insurance—and if it finds an opportunity to sue someone for copying its designs, that’s free money. Samsung is probably well aware of this: In 2018, the company held 61,608 active patent families—34% more than second-place Canon, which held 34,905 patent families. Companies will patent any half-decent idea it legally can, with the full expectation that many of those ideas won’t ever make it to production—but might just pay off in litigation.

Apple