(CN) — In a case involving a chair style developed by celebrated American industrial designers Charles and Ray Eames, the European Union’s high court on Thursday said Europeans must respect copyrights for artistic designs that come from outside the bloc.
The European Court of Justice’s ruling clarified a gray area in international copyright law that allows exceptions for protections over so-called “applied art,” a term used for designs and decoration applied to practical objects.
In dispute was whether the Kwantum chain of interior furniture stores in the Netherlands and Belgium can sell chairs that mimic a design concocted in the United States in the 1940s by Charles and Ray Eames, spouses and pioneering designers who ran the California-based Eames Office between 1943 and 1988.
Vitra, a Swiss designer furniture company, owns the copyright to the Eameses’ chair designs.
In its ruling, the high court said the Eameses’ design was protected by copyright and that similar chairs sold at Kwantum stores breached that copyright.
Nora Fehlbaum, the CEO of Vitra, said the ruling “ends any remaining discrimination against not only these American designers but also all other non-European authors of designs with respect to copyright protection of their works.”
The ruling upheld “comprehensive and non-discriminatory copyright protection,” Fehlbaum said.
Kwantum did not immediately return a message seeking comment.
The dispute arose from a clause in the Berne Convention, a set of international copyright laws that protect works of art, allowing exceptions for the protection of works of applied art.
When it comes to applied art, the Berne Convention extends copyright protection to designs and models only in those countries that have agreed to do so, the court noted.
But the Court of Justice, citing a EU law, said all member states must protect works of art “irrespective of the country of origin of those works or the nationality of their author.” The court’s ruling was not immediately available in English.
The Netherlands Supreme Court, which is handling the Vitra lawsuit, asked the Court of Justice to decide whether EU states can exclude copyright protections to applied art from non-EU countries.
But the high court said EU law does not leave it up to individual EU states to apply their own standards on how to treat artistic designs and models that come from outside the bloc.
The chair design in question, the Dining Sidechair Wood, was part of a furniture design competition organized by the Museum of Modern Art in New York City and it was exhibited there from 1950. Kwantum called its version of the design its “Paris chair.”
Vitra said it began working with the Eameses in 1957 and continues to work with their descendants.
The Eameses were famous for their celebrated molded plywood chairs, a variety of toys and games, work overseeing the 1959 American Exhibition in Moscow, film productions and collaborations with corporations such as Polaroid, IBM and Boeing.
Courthouse News reporter Cain Burdeau is based in the European Union.
