Everyone (both a person and a group of people or a company as a whole) who creates something immediately acquires copyright or intellectual property rights to what they (they) have created. There are legal mechanisms for securing the authors (creators) of such rights and their protection.

Furniture production, like any other type of human activity – is also the creation of talent, knowledge, experience, means of production of intellectual property. Moreover, the object of copyright or intellectual property rights is both the finished furniture product and its design project, on the basis of which the product is created. Moreover, unfinished projects are subject to protection: drawings, industrial designs, models.

Mykhailo Honcharuk, a lawyer and managing partner of the law firm Honcharuk & Partners, spoke about how to protect copyright and intellectual property rights for designers and furniture makers and how not to violate it.

1. Copyright in the work and intellectual property rights to the work

First of all, Mykhailo Honcharuk noted that there is no specific furniture or other branch copyright. It is the same for everyone, as is the Law of Ukraine “On Copyright and Related Rights”, adopted in 2001, which regulates it. However, there are certain features or characteristics when it comes to copyright and intellectual property rights in furniture. For example, under their protection can get a design or design suite of furniture in general, for example, for living room, kitchen or bedroom, and their separate elements – cabinets, pedestals and even some of their components – shelves, drawers, countertops, and so on.

Admittedly, Ukraine is not the best example of how to respect intellectual property rights. And the civilized world has repeatedly pointed to this. Indeed, it has already happened that in our country the infringement of intellectual property rights (although it also involves criminal liability) is not considered a serious offense, but something like crossing the street at a red light. However, we must recognize that the situation as the civilization of society, the movement towards European values ​​is still gradually changing for the better.

There is no special body that would monitor the observance of copyright, detect their infringement. The practice is that if an author (individual or business entity) believes that his or her copyright has been infringed, he or she may apply to law enforcement, including the court, to suppress such acts and punish violators. It is difficult to say how effective such protection can be in the furniture industry of Ukraine because it is difficult to remember whether there were any resonant processes in such lawsuits. And this is not, of course, because we have such obedience to the law among furniture makers in this matter, but because, again, that we have already done so, in contrast to European countries, that those whose copyrights are infringed or not given, therefore, values ​​that are indifferent to or too lenient to violators, considering it unnecessary to sue them. And still do not believe that in this way they will achieve the desired. Also, it must be acknowledged that our current legislation in this area is not perfect, as evidenced by the fact that the relevant ministry has developed a draft of a new, improved law under the same name as the current one.

In view of all this, domestic furniture makers and designers, instead of resorting to litigation to protect their furniture models from counterfeiting by unscrupulous colleagues (often not reputable companies, but small entrepreneurs, which they call ” garages “), prefer to change the model range more often. its furniture range, to improve or complicate the technology of furniture production, to implement exclusive furniture projects for specific orders. It is believed that the author’s, or as they are called designer furniture, ie largely original, is harder to forge than serial. In the case of theft of their intellectual property, furniture owners are even more annoyed not by the fact that fellow criminals earn from what others have invented and sold, but by the fact that by reproducing such furniture forgeries of usually low quality, they discredit the trademark of the rightful owner. causing significant damage to his business reputation.

What’s worse is that there are still cases when people do not know, do not realize, and do not even suspect that they are such right holders and that they are in this guise under the protection of the law. And without knowing it, many lose (both financially and not only) from the fact that some tricksters with impunity and foolishly use the results of their creativity, work, gaining profits, recognition, and popularity, thus establishing themselves in the furniture market.

– We constantly use the terms “copyright” and “intellectual property law” in pairs. This – a tautology or between it and there is a difference?

– There is a difference. In the first case, it is the author’s right to his work, so to speak. With regard to furniture, the copyright is acquired primarily by subject designers who have creatively embodied some of their ideas in the project: sketches, drawings, sketches. And intellectual property rights are acquired to a greater extent by furniture manufacturers who implement a designer’s author’s project in furniture – specific subject works because intellectual property rights are property rights. Can a designer also be entitled to intellectual property? And yes, and no, but more on that later.

– What is harder to stand up for, to protect – copyright or intellectual property rights? And what is most often violated?

– More often in furniture the intellectual property right can be broken. Why? It is more difficult, if not impossible, for someone outside to use a design project that would infringe copyright because it is unlikely that a designer will publicly demonstrate it until it is embodied in a real product. On the contrary, it is mysterious in every way. Unlike furniture-makers, which, by creating a design project furniture, certainly must advertise them widely, showing on their websites, at trade shows, in the show-rooms, furniture stores, and shops – to sell more and faster.

There is no clear answer as to which right is easier to defend in court. Both depend on a whole set of circumstances, arguments, evidence that the plaintiff can provide to the court to confirm that he really is the right holder. Therefore, in the process of creating a project, a thing, a product, it is important to record each stage of this process and preserve this evidence, in whatever form they exist. And even more reliable if copyright and intellectual property rights are officially registered. Original inventions can also be patented, which is also a reliable means of protection.

Furniture project as the design work of authorship as well as further and furniture work as end furniture products produced by the design project can boo you in court forgery-proof as ob’ object and the copyright and intellectual property rights if the answer shall the general requirements of legislator imposes such objects, that result from the activity and exist in the form (drawings, sketches, drawings and real furniture in ).

(To be continued)