Eliminating 'Aesthetics' from Copyright Law: The Aftermath of Cofemel

Abstract

The recent Cofemel judgment of the Court of Justice of the European Union extended the European Union's (EU) originality criterion (i.e. the author's own intellectual creation) to the realm of works of applied art. The Court excluded 'aesthetically significant visual effect' as a condition of copyright protection. It was condemned as subjective and incompatible with the EU originality criterion. The decision may signal a shift in several national copyright laws, under which requirements relating to 'aesthetics' are laid down as a condition to acquire protection. This article will demonstrate that the 'aesthetics criterion', as it emerged historically and has been employed in national copyright laws, is associated with a different meaning than it conveys at first glance. The aesthetics criterion designates the elbow room remaining to the author after functional constraints have been taken into account, and thus represents a form of the functionality doctrine in the domain of copyright law. However, to some extent it also excludes - though not uniformly - commonplace designs from the scope of copyright protection. Against this background, this article suggests that the aesthetics criterion can arguably be reconciled with the EU originality criterion. The aesthetics criterion represents a balance struck between the need for copyright protection in the field of applied arts, on the one hand, and competition, on the other. In order not to upset this careful balance, a robust application of the EU originality criterion is advocated, precluding protection not only to functionality, but also to commonplace creations.