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 he (they) 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.

Legal relations of subject designers and furniture makers

The Law of Ukraine “On Copyright and Related Rights”, which we have to refer to in the context of the topics discussed in this article, as we see, regulates related rights. We asked Mykhailo Honcharuk if they could be purchased in furniture.

– Related rights are closely related to copyright, are derived from it. It will be clearer if we demonstrate the acquisition of a related right on the example of a piece of music, for example, a song. Authors of lyrics and music, poet and composer, are copyright holders, but the performer of their work acquires related rights.

– If you design such a situation in furniture, then, logically, the designer has the copyright to his invented and embodied in the drawings furniture project, which is his work, and the furniture company that “executed” it, ie created a specific choice according to him, must claim a related copyright…

– By logic, it turns out so, but in fact – not quite so. Because according to the Law “On Copyright and Related Rights” industrial designs are not included in the list of objects of copyright. So, having created a furniture product, the furniture company acquires not copyright and related rights to it, but intellectual property rights.

– In turn, the designer, according to whose design project the furniture object is made, also at the same time with the furniture acquires the right to intellectual property? You have already noticed that both yes and no. Now tell us more about “yes” and “no”.

– If we talk about the relationship between the designer and the furniture maker (furniture company), then it is necessary to include another law – the protection of rights to industrial designs.

If a designer who executes a furniture project for a furniture company on a contractual basis, the contract states whether he will sell his copyrights to the customer or will receive a certain percentage of sales of furniture produced by his design project.

If the designer is a full-time employee of the company, then most often the owner of everything he created for the company will not be him, but the company in which he works, because he will create furniture projects in accordance with their job responsibilities. But when concluding an employment contract with a full-time designer, all this must be clearly stipulated.

Often for an eloquent, bright, high-quality demonstration of their furniture on the site, the manufacturer orders their photography to a professional photographer. The legal relationship between them is in fact the same as in his relationship with the designer.

A company that displays not only its furniture but also their photographic images to which it is entitled, may also make a claim against those who, without its consent, use photographic images of its furniture for their own purposes. For example, journalists often do this to illustrate their texts. 

But there is another side to this topic. A furniture company, like any other manufacturer, can consider a violation of its intellectual property rights if someone uses their own photo or video images of its furniture, made, say, in an exhibition or store. Especially if they are used in an unfavourable context for the manufacturer, which will compromise them, and therefore the manufacturer as a whole. Of course, if it is clear that this is her furniture brand.

– Can a branch association – such as our Ukrainian Association of Furniture Manufacturers – act as an arbitrator in disputes between its members over the infringement of copyright or intellectual property rights by one of them? Or in the role of arbitration.

– In order for someone to be an arbiter for someone, it is necessary for both conflicting parties to agree. If the association creates an arbitration court (and this idea, I know, has been expressed), the situation will be the same as with arbitration: both parties to the conflict must agree to be judged by such an arbitration court. But I want to note that the arbitral tribunal under our law is not empowered to consider disputes relating to copyright and intellectual property rights. So in the furniture industry, his powers will be narrowed, and this must be taken into account.

– Well, let’s limit ourselves to arbitration. Can it be sufficiently legitimate without the participation of experts, lawyers of the relevant profile?

– Here it is important that the arbitrators are those whose authority and professionalism in this area are not in doubt. If this is not ensured, such a formation will not make sense: it is obvious that the conflicting parties will not agree to trust incompetent arbitrators. But in any case, without expertise in disputes over copyright and intellectual property rights can not do.