©-LAW

Is a functional shape eligible for copyright protection under the  InfoSoc Directive ? This, in a nutshell, is the intriguing issue that the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has been asked to address in  Brompton Bicycle , C-833/18 . As readers might guess, the shape at issue in this case is Brompton's iconic foldable bike, originally created in 1975 and sold in its current form since 1987: This morning, Advocate General (AG) Campos Sánchez-Bordona issued his  Opinion . He advised the Court to rule that, if the shape is  exclusively  dictated by the technical function of the relevant product, then no copyright subsists in it.  Whilst this conclusion appears reasonable and in line with existing CJEU case law, including - most recently - the  Cofemel  decision  [ here ; for a recent application, see  here ] , the Opinion appears to go a bit astray from that, at least in one notable respect (read on). Let's see a bit more in detail what happe