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.

Opportunities for copyright protection and responsibility for its violation

From what Mykhailo Honcharuk has already said in the first part of the extended commentary, it is known that a person, a group of people, a company immediately automatically acquires copyright or intellectual property rights if something created by them appears. This is a world practice and accordingly, it is fixed by the current Law of Ukraine “On Copyright and Related Rights”. Even if such rights, as well as their objects, are not declared publicly.

– Is the notion of “presumption of authorship” evidence that copyright comes automatically only when work or product is created?

– This is a rather conventional concept. It means that if someone claims authorship, it is not in doubt until someone else claims otherwise and proves it.

Usually in court. But it will be better, more reliable if you not only declare your copyright or intellectual property rights but also officially record them. It will be better if these rights are violated, misappropriated by someone to the detriment of the right holder, and he wants to defend them, stop the violation and punish the violator. Punishment is generally limited to monetary compensation for damage, although the law also provides for criminal liability.

We asked Mykhailo Honcharuk what the mechanism of copyright and intellectual property registration is and who performs such registration.

Copyright registration in Ukraine is carried out by the State Department of Intellectual Property. Applications for copyright registration are submitted to the Ukrainian Agency for Copyright and Related Rights, which is a structural unit of the department. Copyright registration lasts an average of 2-3 months (registration itself – a month from the date of receipt of the application and issuance of a certificate – a month from the date of registration).

For an author who realizes that he is the owner of what he has created, it is important that he be recognized and listed as the author, and that he benefits from it, including material. That is why in case the author proves the facts of infringement of his copyright, he usually demands in court, first of all, monetary compensation for such infringement.

This raises the question of what the amount of monetary compensation can be in case of copyright or intellectual property rights infringement. If, for example, a “garage owner” who has encroached on someone’s intellectual property rights sells a dozen tables a month that is counterfeit of someone’s model, then the rightful owner who is suing him can hardly count on millions in compensation but can count on such amount of compensation, if it is documented that the attacker reproduces thousands of forgeries of the original model of his desk. Often the fact of bringing a counterfeiter of his products to justice is important for the plaintiff.

– It is a very common practice in furniture, when furniture makers and even designers do not stupidly copy, do not rip off each other’s successful models of furniture, but only borrow the original idea, which they considered in them, in order to creatively rethink, develop or to transform into another, which is already sold in their products. Usually, such borrowings are used by furniture from foreign manufacturers, well-known and reputable brands. Is this plagiarism? And where is the line between it and this kind of borrowing? And is it legally enforced?

– First, about ideas. Any idea that arises even in a genius’s head, until it is realized until it acquires a material embodiment, becomes the object of copyright or intellectual property rights. Even if it is announced publicly. And if someone else’s realized idea is reinterpreted by someone else, as has been said, and reinterpreted is embodied in his work, then there may be, so to speak, options. Given how deeply and creatively the borrowing will be rethought and as a result what level of similarity the new object that will be created will have with the product whose idea was borrowed. The legislation does not regulate these nuances in any way. Therefore, such borrowers are not guaranteed that they may also be suspected of encroaching on someone else’s intellectual property, and to protect against this and prove otherwise, you must again have and provide convincing evidence of your rethinking (drawings, drawings, sketches). , models, etc.) and that as a result, their products are also original in their own way, although similar to the products of those who have claims to them. However, even if such evidence is provided and is sufficiently convincing, without a special examination, which should give them confirmation, during the litigation can not do.

– In the first part it was noted that in furniture for protection against counterfeits it is possible to use not only registration of copyright and the intellectual property right, and patenting. What is the difference between copyright and patent rights and do they have the same legal force?

– I will repeat that the copyright protects any work to which in furniture the design project can be equated also. And patent law is closer to the right to intellectual property, ie extends to real objects: inventions, industrial products, samples, original models. Not only on objects as a whole but also on their separate parts, knots, mechanisms, units. As well as hardware or components, if we talk about furniture samples. They are accompanied by appropriate drawings, other evidence of their innovation. The difference between patent law and the copyright is that it is acquired only by registration, and copyright, as we have said, is acquired without its registration.

It is worth noting that intellectual property law is a broader concept than patent law, which, in fact, is an integral part of it, a variety.

In order for the original furniture model or any of its components to have legal protection, it is necessary to file an application with the Ukrpatent patent office, after which the object undergoes a state examination to verify its patentability. Only after that, the object is registered in the register and published in the official source of information of the patent office. After passing all these stages, the applicant receives the exclusive right to the submitted object and to confirm this he is issued a patent.

                      (The third part will be final)