AG Campos in Brompton Bicycle advises CJEU to rule that 'exclusively' functional shapes do not deserve copyright protection
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)....