Design copyright in Denmark: the minimalist approach

"Switched off: court rules no violation of copyright in design case", by Mads Marstrand-Jorgensen (Norsker & Co), was published earlier this month on International Law Office. You can read it in full here.

In short, Danish company Lauritz Knudsen developed, made and sold electronic materials in Denmark for over 100 years. Its prize-winning LK FUGA series of switches has been in production since 1981. In 2004 L-Team began selling its L-control series of switches which, LK believe, infringed its copyright and rights under the Marketing Act (a sort of statutory version of the delict of unfair competition).

The Maritime and Commercial Court held that LK's switches were protected as copyright works and that they were entitled to protection against imitations under the Marketing Act. However, since a series of electrical switches must be considered as basically functional, this reduces opportunities for design development -- which is limited by the dimensions of plugs, by industrial standards and by legislation.

So was LK's copyright infringed? After describing the allegedly infringed product in detail, the court observed that copyright protection of the LK FUGA product range must be considered as very narrow and limited to very close imitations. Under the circumstances, the "not insignificant variations in design as to the arching of the tangent which oppose LK FUGA's in convex and curved frames" gave a somewhat differentiated appearance to the L-control product with the result that, on an overall evaluation, there was no infringement.

This decision is on appeal to the Supreme Court.