Birthday train verdict

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The birthday train judgment is a judgment of the Federal Court of Justice of November 13, 2013 (Az. I ZR 143/12) on the question of the copyright protection threshold for works of applied art .

facts

Heike Wiechmann: Birthday train, ink on paper, 1998, 42 × 30 cm.

In 1998, the designer Heike Wiechmann designed a table decoration for children's birthdays called "Birthday Train" for the wooden toy manufacturer Gollnest & Kiesel ("Goki"). This consists of a wooden locomotive and several wagons on which numbers and candles can be attached. The plaintiff received a total fee of DM 400 for this design and another.

The birthday train became the most successful Goki product and developed into a best seller. Therefore Wiechmann considered the agreed remuneration to be too low and, supported by the trade union ver.di , brought an action at the Lübeck Regional Court for payment of further appropriate remuneration according to the so-called bestseller paragraph ( § 32a UrhG ).

decision

After both the Lübeck Regional Court in 2010 and the Schleswig Higher Regional Court had dismissed the lawsuit in 2012, arguing that the design as an applied art was not subject to copyright protection, but only under design law, due to the lack of sufficient creativity , the Federal Court of Justice overturned the appeal judgment in 2013 and referred the matter to again Decision back to the higher regional court.

The Federal Court of Justice turned away from the case law developed by the Reich Court in 1911 in the “ Schulfraktur judgment ” on the protection of applied art under copyright law and justified this with the Design Directive . According to this, the design right is no longer to be understood as a “minor copyright”, the “substructure” of copyright law, but in its own right, meaning that the justification of a special protection threshold for applied art is no longer applicable.

Guiding principles

“A) The copyright protection of works of applied art within the meaning of § 2 Paragraph 1 No. 4, Paragraph 2 UrhG are basically not subject to any requirements other than the copyright protection of works of non-purpose visual arts or literary and musical creation . It is therefore sufficient that they reach a level of design that justifies speaking of an “artistic” achievement in the opinion of those circles who are receptive to art and who are reasonably familiar with art views. On the other hand, it is not necessary that they clearly exceed the average structure (task by BGH, judgment of June 22, 1995 - I ZR 119/93, GRUR 1995, 581 = WRP 1995, 908 - Silberdistel). "

"B) When assessing whether a work of applied art reaches the level of design required for copyright protection, it must be taken into account that the aesthetic effect of the design can only justify copyright protection insofar as it is not due to the intended use, but to an artistic achievement is based. In addition, it should be noted that a copyright protection justifying, but nevertheless low level of design leads to a correspondingly narrow scope of protection of the work in question. "

"C) The claim to payment of (further) reasonable remuneration according to § 36 Paragraph 1 UrhG old version or § 32 Paragraph 1 Sentence 3, Paragraph 2 Sentence 2 UrhG and § 32a Paragraph 1 Sentence 1 UrhG is in the case of the exploitation of a A work of applied art that is accessible to design protection and does not significantly exceed the average design, is not justified for exploitation activities that were carried out up to the entry into force of the Design Reform Act of March 12, 2004 on June 1, 2004. "

meaning

Since the so-called “Birthday Train Judgment”, the same protection threshold ( Section 2 (2 ) UrhG) has applied in German copyright law for applied art as for so-called pure art. The Federal Court of Justice included the judgment in its collection of decisions .

Another procedure

As a result, the Schleswig Higher Regional Court ruled that even according to the new standard, the birthday train could not be protected by copyright due to a large number of previously known toy train designs. This is different only with the fishing game, but here the claimant's claims for remuneration are already statute-barred ("Birthday Train II"). With regard to the statute of limitations, the plaintiff successfully went into appeal again (“Birthday Train III”).

literature

Meetings

Monographs

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ ver.di: The birthday train rolls to success. Retrieved December 18, 2019 .
  2. ↑ Directive 98/71 / EC on the legal protection of designs.
  3. ↑ BGHZ 199, 52.