©-LAW

Last month, the Milan Court of First Instance issued a decision ( sentenza 2539/2020 , available on darts-ip and already commented  here ) concerning the alleged infringement, by fashion house  Antonio Marras , of copyright (both economic and moral rights) in the photograph below, which the latter had used without the photographer’s authorization in its Fall/Winter 2014-15 fashion collection and campaign: The claimant's work (L) and an item from the Antonio Marras Fall/Winter 2014-15 collection The court sided with the claimant, having established that his photograph – which has been also registered with the US Copyright Office - would qualify for protection under the ‘ordinary’ copyright regime. Under Italian law, in fact, photographs may be protected in two ways: on the one hand, there is the ordinary copyright regime, which is available to photographs that display a ‘creative character’ under Articles 1 and 2 No 7 of the  Italian Copyright Act ; on the other hand

A KIKO store A couple of years ago, The IPKat  reported   on the interesting decision of the Court of Appeal of  inter alia , copyright protection of  makeup producer and retailer KIKO 's store layout under Italian law. Milan in a case concerning, The ruling, which upheld the decision at first instance, confirmed that the layout of KIKO concept stores – notably the way in which the various elements used to furnish such stores are combined, coordinated and assembled – is eligible for protection under  Article 2 No 5 of the Italian Copyright Act  as as an architectural plan. It also found that defendant  WYCON ’s stores had infringed copyright in it. Now, the Italian Supreme Court has confirmed the appropriateness of this conclusion  [this court is not a court on the merits, and may only be seized on issues concerning the correct interpretation of the law]  in a decision published earlier this week ( decision 780/2020 ). Of the twelve grounds of appeal filed by WYC

A  mathematical discovery and a trade mark at once? A few days ago, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) issued its  judgment  in the important  Gömböc  referral (C-237/19)  [see  here  for a discussion of the background] . The decision, which is analyzed in detail on The IPKat  here  and has been also discussed in the context of the  Journal of Intellectual Property Law & Practice ’s  first EU trade mark live webinar   [from 1:06:00; for the dates of the next webinars, see  here ] , is equally relevant to trade mark law (it was indeed a trade mark case concerning protection of 3D marks) and other IP rights (IPRs), including copyright. Assessment of functionality As far as trade marks are concerned, the most valuable aspect of the judgment is perhaps the one concerning how the assessment of ‘technical’ and ‘aesthetic functionality’ is to be conducted under what is currently Article 7(1)(e)  EUTMR /4(1)(e)  EUTMD . Indeed, as  discussed at greater