Hungary: protecting industrial designs by copyright

Hungary gets its first mention on Class 99 today, thanks to "Conditions and limitations of design and copyright protection", a piece written for International Law Office by Danubia's Katalin Horváth. In relevant part, Katalin writes as follows:

"Foreign practitioners and IP stakeholders are often unclear on the extent to which Hungarian copyright law protects industrial designs (ie, applied art) ...

Protecting industrial designs

An industrial design can be protected under Hungarian copyright law if the design has an individual and original nature deriving from the intellectual activity of its creator. This definition means that double protection does not apply automatically; the criterion of creativity (ie, individual and intellectual activity) is met for only a small proportion of normal design shapes.

Section 1(1) of the Copyright Act (76/1999) states that the act protects all literary, academic, scientific and artistic works, regardless of whether they are designated in the act. Among other things, the act refers to:

"[w]orks made by means of drawing, painting, sculpting, engraving [or] lithography, or in any other similar manner, as well as the designs thereof,... designs for technical structures, applied artworks and their designs... [and] industrial designs."

Section 1(3) stipulates that a work or creation is entitled to copyright protection on the basis of its individual and original nature deriving from the intellectual activity of its creator. Copyright protection does not depend on quantitative, qualitative or aesthetic characteristics or on any judgment on the work's quality. Sections 1(6) and (7) identify the main exceptions to copyright protection: ideas, principles, theories, procedures, operating methods, mathematical operations and folklore. However, the provision on folklore does not concern copyright protection for individual and original works that are inspired by folk art ...".