How to judge plagiarism of app store pages? Recently, a war without gunpowder kicked off between the two game application centers. On the evening of December 29, taptap's official microblog issued a document calling Lei Jun, chairman of Xiaomi technology, together with screenshots of taptap and the mobile app application interface of Xiaomi game center, implying that the application interface of Xiaomi game center copied taptap. The parent company immediately forwarded the microblog and added "I'm not OK". (illustration: taptap official micro shouting Lei Jun, with application interface comparison) The day after the microblog was issued, the 21st Century Business Herald reporter checked the app of Xiaomi game center and found that Xiaomi has quietly modified its interface layout. However, for whether the previous page layout of Xiaomi game center constitutes an infringement on taptap, many experts pointed out in an interview with 21 reporters that the design of application interface is more like an "Engineering Scheme" than a "work" defined in the copyright law. The space for the originality of the interface designer to play is actually very limited. It is difficult to define this. The interface design of Xiaomi game center does copy taptap. Dispute caused by crash of application interface height At the Xiaomi new product launch just ended on December 28, Lei Jun, chairman of Xiaomi technology, put forward the slogan of "officially benchmarking apple and learning from Apple". It is worth mentioning that taptap also attached photos with this slogan on its microblog, saying that instead of learning from apple, Xiaomi game center "copied the wrong homework". Taptap of Xiaomi game center is an application platform that provides third-party game download. It was officially launched in April 2016. It was jointly founded by Huang Yimeng, chairman and CEO of Xinxin company, Huang Xiwei, who has left the company, and others. The screenshot attached to its microblog shows that the "recommended" interface in taptap and Xiaomi game center adopts a card design with rounded corners, and its interface layout, font and color matching are relatively similar. (illustration: taptap application interface on the left and Xiaomi game center application interface on the right) When the reporter checked the "recommendation" page of Xiaomi game center again on the press day, Xiaomi has removed the page. At present, the page layout displayed on the home page is quite different from taptap. (picture: the current "home page" and "featured" interfaces of Xiaomi game center) In an interview with 21 reporters, a number of legal industry experts pointed out that although the interfaces of the previous two apps seem to have many similarities, whether the behavior of Xiaomi game center plagiarizing taptap is tenable remains to be discussed. "In theory, taptap can sue Xiaomi for copyright infringement or unfair competition." Xia Hailong told reporters that he also pointed out that whether Xiaomi game center constitutes an infringement on taptap depends on whether the controversial interface given by taptap constitutes a work under the copyright law, or whether it belongs to "influential commodity packaging and decoration" under the anti unfair competition law. "The software interface may include various elements such as graphic icons, pictures and dynamic visual effects. These elements also constitute the overall layout of the interface. For taptap, the most important thing is to first clarify which elements Xiaomi game 'copied' before it is possible to further clarify the legal basis for subsequent rights protection." However, Xia Hailong further pointed out that from the perspective of interface design alone, it is likely to be considered by the court that it lacks originality and does not constitute a work. Can the anti unfair competition law be used to protect the rights of interface design? App application interface design is suspected to be "excessive reference". Why is it difficult to protect their rights and interests by adopting the copyright law? Zhu Junchao, founder of nuocheng game law and game lawyer, and Liu shenfan, his assistant lawyer, said in an interview that according to the existing screenshots displayed in taptap microblog, it is difficult to determine that Xiaomi Application Center constitutes copyright infringement. "Only when it enjoys copyright can it be infringed. Taptap first needs to prove that its application interface is original and does not belong to general expression, and then it can constitute a work protected by copyright, which is the difficulty. Secondly, it needs to prove that it enjoys the copyright of the application interface based on Creation or authorization, and finally it can make an application interface infringement charge against Xiaomi." Liu shenfan told reporters 21. The design of APP application interface is more like a conventional "Engineering Scheme". Liu shenfan pointed out that the search bar, recommendation bar, leaderboard, application publicity map and application introduction bar are the core components of the app application interface and the necessary components or general expressions of the interface, just as the options such as "start game", "save game", "read game", "game Settings" and "exit game" constitute the core components of the initial interface of the game. In fact, after observing the application interfaces of other game centers on the market, the reporter found that at present, most of the mainstream interfaces of the game center adopt card design, and the layout similarity of each component is high. The homogenization of interface design is intensified, which further improves the difficulty of safeguarding rights of APP application interface. (illustration: the picture on the left shows the post bar game center, and the picture on the right shows the bilibilili game center) In this context, can the anti unfair competition law provide an effective solution for safeguarding the rights of interface design? In an interview with the 21st reporter, Fu Gang, a lawyer of Shanghai Xieli law firm, pointed out that the anti unfair competition law is a common legal basis in the protection of interface design. According to different basic legal provisions, it is also divided into two protection modes, which are respectively based on "special decoration of well-known commodities" in Item 1 of Article 6 of the anti unfair competition law, And the general provision of Article 2 of the Anti Unfair Competition Law: "business operators shall abide by the principles of voluntariness, equality, fairness, good faith and generally recognized business ethics in market transactions. Acts that violate the provisions of this law, damage the legitimate rights and interests of other business operators and disrupt the social and economic order belong to unfair competition." "With the Anti Unfair Competition Law" Taking item 1 of Article 6 as an example, if the rights defender can prove that the relevant interface design is well-known enough to identify the source of the app, or if the interface design is used in other apps, the relevant public will mistakenly believe that the app is connected with the rights defender and its operators, It can be argued that the interface design department uses the "unique decoration of well-known commodities" without authorization, and then it is recognized as an act of unfair competition. " Fu Gang said. However, Liu shenfan stressed to 21 reporters that although such incidents can be considered to be handled through the anti unfair competition law, they may not succeed. He pointed out that through the protection of rights in the anti law act, the rights defenders should first clarify their rights and interests worthy of legal protection, and the design of the application interface is essentially to facilitate the use of users. "If the monopoly use status is indirectly granted by legal protection, the normal use choice of users will eventually be adversely limited, which is contrary to the original legislative intention of the anti unfair competition law to protect the legitimate rights and interests of operators and consumers." In addition, Zhu Junchao also specially reminded that the anti unfair competition law has its independent legislation and use considerations. At present, both theoretical and practical circles tend to think that it is not suitable to play a role as a bottom-up law. (Xinhua News Agency)