That careful balance — which is most directly reflected in the short protection period granted to an inventor or designer — would be upset if the allotted term were simply extended to reach the generous periods afforded to copyright protection. Designers would lose the incentive to avail themselves of the industrial property system if, in return for lower costs and fewer procedural requirements (inter alia lack of registration), they were guaranteed copyright protection of their creations for a much longer term.

One of the important contributions of the judgment in Cofemel is that it does not allow the originality of the purported ‘work’ (in that case, clothing) to be linked to its aesthetic elements. The Court refused to allow reliance on aesthetic factors as a ground for protection of a design by copyright.

It can be inferred from those rulings that, as a general rule, works (objects) of applied arts whose shape is dictated by their function cannot be protected by copyright. If the appearance of a work of applied art is exclusively dictated by its technical function, as a decisive factor, it will not be eligible for copyright protection.

[D]esigns whose shape is dictated by technical considerations which do not leave room for the exercise of creative freedom are not eligible for copyright protection. Conversely, where a design merely has a number of functional aspects, that does not deprive it of copyright protection.

When examining whether or not there is a right for the object to be protected as a work, the court is entitled to explore the inventor or designer’s original intention rather than that of the person who reproduces his invention or design.
For that purpose, account must be taken of the time when the invention or design was initially conceived in order to assess whether its author was really seeking to achieve his own intellectual creation or whether, instead, he was seeking only to protect an idea applicable to the development of an original industrial product with a view to the mass production and sale of that product on the market. The fact that there has been an industrial application of the invention or design or that a commercial benefit has been obtained from it may provide evidence worthy of attention.
From that perspective, the fact that subsequent recognition of the design may also warrant its exhibition in museums does not appear to me to be relevant. That factor or others like it, such as the receipt of awards in the sphere of industrial design, confirms, rather, that its nature is that of an industrial object deserving of praise, or even admiration, in its own sphere, or that it has a number of important aesthetic components.

In a position to "achieve his own intellectual creation"?

IPKat-approved jacquard fabric

• either a graphic work [see the definition at s4(2) CDPA], or
• a work of artistic craftmanship [there is no statutory definition of this category]

NOTE: the UK has a closed list of protectable copyright subject-matter. This has traditionally meant that, in order to claim copyright, there should be not just an original work, but also a work of the 'right kind'. In the past, certain types of less conventional subject-matter - including the Star Wars Stormtrooper Helmet and the assembly of a scene - were refused protection, while for works like TV formats uncertainties whether copyright protection would be available have subsisted for a long time.

The fabric as a graphic work?

HHJ Hacon considered whether a fabric could be considered a graphic work, and noted that - whilst the list in s4(2) is not exhaustive - "[i]t does not follow that the definition is endlessly flexible." He found that a fabric would not satisfy the definition of graphic work: the relevant notion cannot be stretched to include a fabric, whether made on a loom or a knitting machine. 

The fabric as a work of artistic craftsmanship?

The judge thus turned to the consideration of whether copyright could subsist in the fabric as a work of artistic craftsmanship. To this end, he began by recalling the history of closed subject-matter categorization and the challenges that EU - or rather: CJEU-driven - harmonization have presented:

The Statute of Anne of 1709 was the world's first copyright statute, although there had been some earlier common law giving rights to authors. The Statute was concerned with literary copyright. Since then, because Parliament has incrementally afforded copyright protection to other types of work, the law has become structured in the form of successive categories of copyright work. In the 300 years since the Statute of Anne a claimant has been required to show that his work falls within at least one of the categories identified for protection in the copyright statute of the day. In recent years, there may have developed a tension between the way this is approached in the 1988 Act and EU copyright directives which have entered into force.

He then noted that, if the fabric at issue could not be considered a work of artistic craftsmanship, then "the design knitted into it is not protected by any other provision of the 1988 Act". This would be so because s1 CDPA is "clear": "a work is only capable of being a copyright work if it falls within one of the three descriptions set out under subsection (1)." 

The judge reviewed case law on works of artistic craftsmanship. He noted that, to determine whether the claimant's fabric qualifies as such, it would be necessary to determine whether the employee who created it "was both (a) a craftsman in that he or she made the fabric in a skilful way, taking justified pride in his workmanship and (b) was an artist in that he or she used their creative ability to produce something which has aesthetic appeal." (Bonz Group (Pty) Ltd v Cooke [1994] 3 N.Z.L.R. 216). He was of the view that the claimant's work could qualify for protection if this was the test. However, if the test was instead that of the House of Lords in George Hensher Ltd v Restawhile Upholstery (Lancs) Ltd [1976] AC 64 (a case decided under the 1956 Copyright Act), the conclusion could be that the claimant's work may not qualify for protection.

At this point, HHJ Hacon turned to EU law and the interpretation given of it by the CJEU.

Applying Cofemel

Before considering Cofemel, the judge recalled the earlier CJEU decision in Levola Hengelo, C-310/17 [here], which clarified that the notion of 'work' is an autonomous concept of EU law. As such, it must receive uniform interpretation and application across the EU.

Turning to Cofemel, the judge recalled that in its decision "[t]he CJEU ruled that national law could not impose a requirement of aesthetic or artistic value." Hence, the judge stated,

I take the view that, subject to my being satisfied that the [claimant's fabric] is original in that its design was its author's own intellectual creation, that design is a work within the meaning of art.2 of Directive 2001/29. If no sufficiently similar design existed before it was created, it must have been the expression of the author's free and creative choices.

He continued noting that:

Pursuant to the Marleasing principle, I am required to interpret the 1988 Act, so far as is possible, in conformity with Directive 2001/29 and therefore in conformity with the way in which that Directive has been interpreted by the CJEU

Clearly both a craftsman and an artist

The issue, the judge explained, was "not whether Directive 2001/29 has the effect of removing all the gaps there may be in copyright protection available from a court at first instance for 'works' within the meaning of art.2 of the Directive, but whether it is possible to interpret s.4(1)(c) of the 1988 Act in conformity with art.2 of Directive 2001/29 such that the [claimant's fabric] qualifies as a work of artistic craftsmanship and thereby its design becomes entitled to copyright protection. In my view it is, up to a point. Complete conformity with art.2, in particular as interpreted by the CJEU in Cofemel, would exclude any requirement that the [claimant's fabric] has aesthetic appeal".

The judge found that he did not have to go that far, since the fabric did in fact have aesthetic appeal. 

He concluded that the claimant's fabric was protected in accordance with the Bonz Group test and that copyright in it had been infringed.

Comment

The decision, as mentioned, appears to be the first time that a UK court considers the CJEU judgment in Cofemel. What is interesting about it is the acknowledgment that, indeed, full compliance with it would probably require granting protection to an original work, irrespective of its aesthetic appeal (and, as I have said a few times on this blog, irrespective of the category it belongs to).

In the light of a number of recent judgments of the CJEU, it may be arguable that it is not a fatal objection to a claim that copyright subsists in a particular work that the work is not one of the kinds of work listed in section 1(1)(a) of the Copyright, Designs and Patents 1988 and defined elsewhere in that Act. Nevertheless, it remains clear that the putative copyright work must be a literary or artistic work within the meaning of Article 2(1) of the Berne Convention.

It just a few months ago that this blog reported on the Opinion of Advocate General Tanchev in the Sky v SkyKick, C-371/18 case.

• Whether an EU or national trade mark may be declared wholly or partially invalid on the ground that some or all of the terms in the specification of goods and services are lacking in sufficient clarity and precision to enable the competent authorities and third parties to determine on the basis of those terms alone the extent of the protection conferred by the trade mark;
• In case that answer to the question above is in the affirmative, whether a term like 'computer software' is too general to be considered 'sufficiently clear and precise';
• Whether it is bad faith simply to apply to register a trade mark without any intention to use it in relation to the specified goods or services;
• If so, whether it is possible to conclude that the applicant made the application partly in good faith and partly in bad faith if and to the extent that the applicant had an intention to use the trade mark in relation to some of the specified goods or services, but no intention to use the trade mark in relation to other specified goods or services;
• Whether section 32(3) of the UK Trade Marks Act 1994 is compatible with the EU Trade Mark Directive and its predecessors.

The Court found that the supply by downloading, for permanent use, of an e-book is not covered by the right of ‘distribution to the public’ provided for by Article 4(1) of Directive 2001/29, but that it is covered by the right of ‘communication to the public’ provided for in Article 3(1) of that directive, in which case exhaustion is excluded under paragraph 3 of that article. 

In support of that finding, the Court concluded in particular from the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) Copyright Treaty underlying that directive, and from the travaux préparatoires for the directive, that the EU legislature had intended that rule of exhaustion to be reserved for the distribution of tangible objects, such as books on a material medium. By contrast, the application of that rule of exhaustion to e-books would be likely to affect the interests of rightholders in obtaining appropriate reward much more than in the case of books on a material medium, since dematerialised digital copies of e-books do not deteriorate with use and are, therefore, perfect substitutes for new copies on any second-hand market. 

As regards more specifically the concept of ‘communication to the public’, the Court indicated that this should be understood in a broad sense covering all communication to the public not present at the place where the communication originates and, thus, any such transmission or retransmission of a work to the public by wire or wireless means. That concept involves two cumulative criteria, namely an act of communication of a work and the communication of that work to a public. 

As regards the first criterion, it is apparent from the explanatory memorandum in the proposal for Directive 2001/29 that ‘the critical act is the “making available of the work to the public”, thus the offering [of] a work on a publicly accessible site, which precedes the stage of its actual “on-demand transmission”’, and that ‘it is not relevant whether any person actually has retrieved it or not’. Thus, according to the Court, the making available of the works concerned to anyone who is registered with the reading club’s website must be considered a ‘communication’ of a work, irrespective of whether the person concerned avails himself or herself of that opportunity by actually retrieving the e-book from that website. 

So far as concerns the second criterion, account should be taken not only of the number of persons able to access the same work at the same time, but also of how many of them may access it in succession. In the present case, according to the Court, the number of persons who may have access, at the same time or in succession, to the same work via the reading club’s platform is substantial. Consequently, subject to verification by the referring court taking into account all the relevant information, the work in question must be regarded as being communicated to a public. 

The Court also held that, in order to be categorised as a communication to the public, a protected work must be communicated using specific technical means, different from those previously used or, failing that, to a new public, that is to say, to a public that was not already taken into account by the copyright holders when they authorised the initial communication of their work to the public. In the present case, since the making available of an e-book is generally accompanied by a user licence authorising the user who has downloaded the e-book concerned only to read that e-book from his or her own equipment, it must be held that a communication such as that effected by Tom Kabinet is made to a public that was not already taken into account by the copyright holders and, therefore, to a new public.

Analogically exhausted Kat

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