The threshold of originality is a concept in copyright law that is used to assess whether a particular work can be protected by copyright. It is used to distinguish works that are sufficiently original to warrant copyright protection from those that are not.
A full report of this case has been published on Kluwer IP Law. In this interesting case, the Supreme Court of Estonia examined whether the answers given by the claimant in the framework of an interview are works protectable by copyright. Section 4(6) of the Copyright Act stipulates that the protection of a work by…
Can a scooter enjoy, contemporaneously, protection as a three-dimensional trademark (hereinafter 3D mark) and under copyright law? Apparently it can, at least according to the Court of Turin, which recently said so, with its decision no. 1900/2017 dated March 17, 2017. The case was started when Piaggio, maker of the scooter Vespa, asserted rights arising…
It could be called the Dutch case of the summer of 2016: the question of whether beer manufacturer Bavaria’s slogan “Zo. Nu eerst een Bavaria” (translated: “So. Now first a Bavaria”) is a work entitled to copyright protection. In summary proceedings, the District Court of The Hague decided that the slogan is a work. The…
As discussed in this blog post, the impact which Brexit has on the UK’s copyright regime will largely depend on the exact form that Brexit takes. Whilst copyright has remained far less harmonised across EU member states than other IP rights, one aspect of UK law which has been affected by the EU is the…
The court of appeals confirmed that there had been infringement of copyright in the claimant’s photographs, and in doing so, clarified the requirements for the protection of photos as copyright works. The court provided guidance regarding lump sum compensation as an alternative to compensation by way of direct damages. A full summary of this case…
The French Supreme Court stated that the lower courts must take into consideration all the choices of the author in order to decide whether a work is original and therefore protected by copyright law, and not simply the common aspects of the work. A full summary of this case has been published on Kluwer IP…
The Polish Supreme Court held that the use of elements of a work of authorship, which are widely known and available (in the public domain), in another work in which those elements were combined in a different way, constitutes an expression of individual creative thought, and cannot therefore be regarded as an infringement of copyright…
A recent judgment by the CJEU set aside a decision of the General Court annulling an OHIM decision to invalidate a Community trade mark owned by the National Lottery Commission, based on the presumed existence of an earlier copyright. The CJEU remitted the case back to the General Court for a ruling taking into account…
Erno Rubik, creator of the famous Rubik’s Cube, brought suit against a Dutch enterprise that trades in gift articles, including the so-called ‘Magic Cube’, which strongly resembles Rubik’s own ‘Rubik’s Cube’. Prior to the Supreme Court proceedings, the Arnhem Court of Appeals ruled that the (combination of) the Rubik’s Cube’s characteristic six colours was considered…
The bizarre saga known as Garcia v. Google has finally come to end with an eleven judge en banc decision of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (Garcia v. Google, Inc., 786 F.3d 733 (9th Cir. 2015)). That holding came in response to a remarkable, if not astonishing holding by a…
