The Maritime and Commercial Court has today ruled in the first lawsuit concerning the protection of the well-known Omaggio vase series from Kähler. The case involved the sale of a number of vases that had been produced by the Danish company Bovictus A / S and sold in, among other things, COOP stores around the country. The vases all appeared in the cream-colored bottom color and embellished with the characteristic stripe design from the Omaggio vase series. The vases were roughly the same shape as the Omaggio vases except one, which had a shape similar to a candlestick marketed by Kähler and one that had a very different rounded shape with a very thin neck. Kähler was represented by attorney Johan Løje.
The court found that the Omaggio vase series is protected by copyright individually and as a series and further found that the Bovictus vases, as well as those which appeared in the same form as the one that appeared in a form that closely resembled an Omaggio candlestick, violated Kähler’s copyright to the Omaggio vases. The court did not find that the very rounded vase constituted an infringement and Bovictus was acquitted of that vase.
The judgment is a cementing of the protection of design and opens up for extended protection against infringements made in series. If an infringer produces a series of copy products and uses, among other things, an appearance from a protected product with a different use, copyright infringement will continue.