©-LAW

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 t...

IPKat-approved jacquard fabric Yesterday, the  Intellectual Property Enterprise Court  (IPEC, a specialist court which is part of the Business and Property Courts of the High Court of Justice of England and Wales) issued what appears to be the first UK decision tackling the implications of the judgment of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in  Cofemel , C-683/17   [see  here ;  Cofemel  was also awarded the prestigious  Kat-award 'Copyright Decision of the Year 2019' ] . It is the decision in  Response Clothing Ltd v The Edinburgh Woollen Mill Ltd  [2020] EWHC 148 (IPEC) (29 January 2020) . Background The claimant, Response, is a clothing company; the defendant, EWM, is a major retailer of clothing with about 400 stores in the UK. Between 2009 and 2012, Response supplied EWM with ladies tops made of a  jacquard fabric  of a design referred to as a 'wave arrangement'. In 2012, Response attempt...

G-Star Elwood, a style of jeans that G-Star claims Cofemel to have copied in the background  Portuguese  proceedings As  announced  on The IPKat, last week the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) issued its Cofemel , C-683/17   [not yet available in English] . It ruled that, as far as designs are concerned, no other requirement is mandated for copyright protection to arise under the  InfoSoc Directive , but the sufficient originality of the design at issue. much awaited judgment in  Earlier case law  The ruling is not surprising, considering earlier CJEU case law, most notably the decision in  Flos , C-168/09 . This was a reference from Italy asking about the compatibility with EU law of certain Italian provisions that the Court of First Instance of Milan had deemed potentially incompatible with the principle of cumulation envisaged under EU law. The Italian approach to copyright protection of designs has been traditi...

What is the standard of originality for copyright in works of applied art, and industrial models and designs? Is there an EU rule or can Member States decide to set their own threshold to protection? This, in a nutshell, is the very interesting and potentially controversial issue that the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has just been asked to address in a brand-new reference from Portugal, ie  Cofemel , C-683/17 . The application of the Portoguese Supreme Court is not yet available on the Curia website, but these are the questions referred (via  @titorendas ): At this stage I am not aware of the nature of the Portuguese litigation but - from the way in which the questions are formulated - it would appear that: (1) The reference is not really about EU law as such, but rather CJEU's interpretation of EU law ("the CJEU's interpretation").  (2) This suggests that the reference may be about whether and to what extent the string of CJEU o...