The copyright protection for utilitarian objects is subject to the same requirements as for other subject matter, said the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in a judgment handed down on Thursday 4 December (joined cases C-580/23 and C-795/23).
In Sweden and Germany, two furniture manufacturers believe that retailers have infringed their copyright in dining room tables and a modular furniture system.
The CJEU has been asked to rule on the conditions under which a utilitarian object may constitute a work of applied art and therefore enjoy protection under Directive 2001/29 harmonising certain aspects of copyright.
Relying on the case-law (Case C-683/17), the Court recalls that an object of a utilitarian nature intended to be mass-produced may be protected as a work within the meaning of copyright provided that its originality is assessed in accordance with the same requirements as those used to assess the originality of other types of subject matter.
According to the Court, a work of applied art is an object that reflects the personality of its author, and choices dictated by technical constraints are not part of the creator’s free and creative choices. On the other hand, the author’s intentions, their sources of inspiration, the use of shapes that are already available, the likelihood of a similar independent creation or the recognition of the subject matter in professional circles may be taken into account to establish the originality of the object in question.
In order to establish an infringement of copyright, it is necessary to determine whether creative elements of the protected work have been reproduced in a recognisable way in the allegedly infringing subject matter, the European court emphasised. The same overall visual impression created by the two subject matters at issue and the degree of originality of the work concerned are irrelevant.
See the Court’s judgment: https://aeur.eu/f/jug (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)