The CJEU judgment in Kwantum v Vitra (Case C-227/23) concerns copyright protection for the Dining Sidechair Wood (the DSW chair), which was designed by Charles and Ray Eames (nationals of the United States) in 1948 and is manufactured by Vitra, a Swiss company.
In 2014, Vitra discovered that Kwantum, a Dutch and Belgian retailer, was marketing a chair which it claimed infringed copyright in the DSW chair. Vitra brought an action before the Dutch courts and, in due course, the Supreme Court of the Netherlands decided to refer questions regarding which copyright principles applied to the CJEU.
Specifically, the Netherlands Supreme Court sought a ruling on the application of Article 2(7) of the Berne Convention. This is known as the material reciprocity clause and provides that:
“Works protected in the country of origin solely as designs and models shall be entitled in another country of the Union only to such special protection as is granted in that country to designs and models; however, if no such special protection is granted in that country, such works shall be protected as artistic works.”
Copyright principles
In answer to the first question referred, the CJEU said a situation in which a company claims copyright protection for a subject matter of applied art marketed in an EU Member State, provided that that subject matter may be classified as a ‘work’ within the meaning of the InfoSoc Directive, falls within the material scope of EU law.
The Court reiterated the conclusions in the Levola Hengelo and Cofemel cases that applied art may be classified as a work where the subject matter is original and is the expression of the author’s own intellectual creation.
Berne Convention
Responding to the other questions, the Court said that the InfoSoc Directive precludes EU Member States from applying in national law the criterion of material reciprocity in Article 2(7). It is for the EU legislature alone to decide whether the grant in the EU of the rights laid down in the Directive should be limited.
Moreover, the Court said that an EU Member State is not permitted to apply, by way of derogation from the provisions of EU law, the criterion of material reciprocity in Article 2(7) in respect of a work the country of origin of which is the USA.
What does this mean?
The judgment appears to reaffirm the aim of the InfoSoc Directive to harmonise copyright law in the EU and to avoid differences between EU Member States. It also confirmed that it is for the EU legislature alone to determine whether the IP rights laid down in the Directive should be limited; an EU Member State cannot rely on the Berne Convention to exempt itself from its obligations.
This is by no means the last work on copyright and works of applied art, as there are at least three other referrals pending – as this post on the IPKat blog explains.
To find out more about the issues raised in this blog contact Rosie Burbidge