Berlin (AP) – Birkenstock: They are omnipresent in the summer, comfortable and very German. Sometimes they look chic and sometimes ragged. But can these sandals be considered art?
That was a question that the German Federal Court of Justice grappled with on Thursday, and they decided that it was free. Comfortable footwear.
Headquartered in Linz am Rhine, Germany, Birkenstock said the tradition of cutting shoes dates back to 1774 and filed a lawsuit against three competitors who sold sandals that were very similar to that of itself. I say it.
The shoe manufacturer claimed that the sandals were “copyrighted works of unimagined art.” Under German law, art works enjoy long-term intellectual property protections than consumer products.
The company called for an injunction to stop competitors from creating imitation sandals and ordering them to remember and destroy those already on the market. The defendant corporation was not identified in a court statement.
The case had been heard in two lower courts before the highest courts for German civil trials got heavier on Thursday, which opposed the issue.
The Cologne District Court initially recognized the shoe as an applied artwork and granted the order, but the higher Regional Court in Cologne overturned the order of appeal, the German press agency DPA reported.
The Court of Appeals said that artistic achievements cannot be established in the widely threatened, large buckle sandals.
The Federal Court of Justice took sides with the Court of Appeal and dismissed the case. In its ruling, it stated that the product cannot protect copyright if “technical requirements, rules, or other constraints determine the design.”
“For all other types of work, the level of design should not be too low for copyright protection of applied artworks,” the court wrote. “For copyright protection, we need to achieve a level of design that reveals personality.”
