Intellectual property: Member States are required to protect works of art in the European Union, irrespective of the country of origin of those works or the nationality of their author. The case was between Vitra Collections AG (‘Vitra’), a company governed by Swiss law, on the one hand, and Kwantum Nederland BV and Kwantum België BV (together, ‘Kwantum’), which operate, in the Netherlands and in Belgium, a chain of shops selling interior design articles, including furniture, on the other, on the ground that Kwantum marketed a chair which, according to Vitra, infringes copyright held by it.
The Court (First Chamber) hereby rules:
- A situation in which a company claims copyright protection for a subject matter of applied art marketed in a Member State, provided that that subject matter may be classified as a ‘work’ within the meaning of Directive 2001/29/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 22 May 2001 on the harmonisation of certain aspects of copyright and related rights in the information society, falls within the material scope of EU law.
- Article 2(a) and Article 4(1) of Directive 2001/29, read in conjunction with Article 17(2) and Article 52(1) of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, must be interpreted as meaning that, as EU law currently stands, they preclude Member States from applying, in national law, the criterion of material reciprocity laid down in the second sentence of Article 2(7) of the Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, signed in Berne on 9 September 1886 (Paris Act of 24 July 1971), as amended on 28 September 1979, in respect of a work of applied art the country of origin of which is a third country and the author of which is a national of a third country. It is for the EU legislature alone, in accordance with Article 52(1) of the Charter of Fundamental Rights, to provide, by means of EU legislation, whether the grant in the European Union of the rights laid down in Article 2(a) and Article 4(1) of that directive should be limited.
- The first paragraph of Article 351 TFEU must be interpreted as not permitting a Member State to apply, by way of derogation from the provisions of EU law, the criterion of material reciprocity contained in the second sentence of Article 2(7) of the Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, signed in Berne on 9 September 1886 (Paris Act of 24 July 1971), as amended on 28 September 1979, in respect of a work the country of origin of which is the United States of America.