The European Court ruled a highly anticipated decision regarding Case C‑395/16 DOCERAM GmbH v CeramTec GmbH. The case concerns the following:
DOCERAM is a company manufacturing technical ceramic components. In particular, it supplies weld centring pins to customers in the automotive, textile machinery and machinery industries. It is the proprietor of a number of registered Community designs which protect centring pins for welding in three different geometrical shapes, each of which is produced in six different types.
CeramTec also manufactures and sells centring pins in the same variants as those protected by the designs of which DOCERAM is the proprietor.
Relying on an infringement of its Community designs, DOCERAM brought an action against CeramTec before the Landgericht Düsseldorf (Regional Court, Düsseldorf, Germany), seeking an order for CeramTec to discontinue the infringement of its intellectual property rights. The latter brought a counterclaim for a declaration of invalidity of the contested designs, maintaining that the features of appearance of the products in question were dictated solely by their technical function.
The Landgericht Düsseldorf (Regional Court, Düsseldorf) dismissed the action brought by DOCERAM and declared the designs at issue to be invalid on the ground that they were excluded from the protection afforded by Article 8(1) of Regulation No 6/2002.
DOCERAM appealed against that judgment to the Oberlandesgericht Düsseldorf (Higher Regional Court, Düsseldorf, Germany). In particular, that court observes, first, that the designs at issue are new and have an individual character and, second, alternative designs of the centring pins concerned exist which are not protected by the Community law on designs. Therefore, that court considers that for the purposes of the application of the exclusion laid down in Article 8(1) of Regulation No 6/2002, it is necessary to establish whether the existence of those alternative designs leads to the conclusion that the features of appearance of those products are not covered by Article 8(1) of Regulation No 6/2002, or whether it is also necessary to ascertain whether the technical function was the only factor which dictated those features.
That court points out that there are differing approaches in the case-law and in legal literature on that question. One approach is that the sole criterion for the application of Article 8(1) of Regulation No 6/2002 is the existence of alternative designs which fulfil the same technical function, which demonstrates that the design at issue is not dictated solely by reason of its technical function within the meaning of that provision. The opposing view is that that provision is applicable where the various features of appearance of the product are dictated solely by the need to achieve a technical solution and that the aesthetic considerations are entirely irrelevant. In that case there is no creative effort worthy of protection as a design.
In those circumstances, the Oberlandesgericht Düsseldorf (Higher Regional Court, Düsseldorf) decided to stay the proceedings and to refer the following questions to the Court of Justice for a preliminary ruling:
‘(1) Are the features of appearance of a product solely dictated by its technical function, within the meaning of Article 8(1) of [Regulation No 6/2002] which excludes protection, also if the design effect is of no significance for the product design, but the (technical) functionality is the sole factor that dictates the design?
(2) If the Court answers Question 1 in the affirmative:
From which point of view is it to be assessed whether the individual features of appearance of a product have been chosen solely on the basis of considerations of functionality? Is an “objective observer” required and, if so, how is such an observer to be defined?’
The Court decision:
1. Article 8(1) of Council Regulation (EC) No 6/2002 of 12 December 2001 on Community designs must be interpreted as meaning that in order to determine whether the features of appearance of a product are exclusively dictated by its technical function, it must be established that the technical function is the only factor which determined those features, the existence of alternative designs not being decisive in that regard.
2. Article 8(1) of Regulation No 6/2002 must be interpreted as meaning that, in order to determine whether the relevant features of appearance of a product are solely dictated by its technical function, within the meaning of that provision, the national court must take account of all the objective circumstances relevant to each individual case. In that regard, there is no need to base those findings on the perception of an ‘objective observer’.
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY PLANET 