Legal Designs
Legal Designs

Danish Designers as Court-Appointed Experts and the Expansion of the Concept of Copyright

Author(s): Stina Teilmann-Lock
Subject(s): Law, Constitution, Jurisprudence
Published by: Central European University Press
Keywords: copyright and patent right;Denmark;design;
Summary/Abstract: In the three centuries that have passed since its introduction by the British Statute of Anne in 1710, copyright law has been transformed from a narrow law regulating only the printing of books to a modern wide-ranging law that protects intangible property rights in the works of sculptors, jewelers, photographers, architects, cabinetmakers, software developers and numerous other types of people who are recognized to be creative. It has been acknowledged that their products or artifacts contain an intangible dimension that is protectable by copyright law. An example of the expansion of this subject matter occurred in the early twentieth century in Danish copyright law when design became an object of copyright protection in Denmark. Recently, Danish lawyers have commented on the fact that, in copyright infringement cases involving applied art, Danish courts tend to accord an unimpeachable authority to the views of court-appointed experts.2 Yet few have sufficiently recognized quite how important and influential these court-appointed experts have been. Strategically, they have been given the authority to inform judges and lawyers, and society at large, about both the principles of modernist aesthetics in design and the working practices of designers. It will be argued in this chapter that court-appointed experts, in particular experts recruited from the circle of “Danish Modern” designers, have had a crucial impact on the direction of design copyright in Denmark—both on the scope of copyright protection of applied art, and on the very notion of “design” which deserves such protection. Three landmark cases from Danish law concerning copyright infringement in designs will be discussed, tracing a path from expert opinion statements to statutory law.

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