The German federal court made a ruling recently that Birkenstocks do not qualify to be called ‘art’ and hence not protected by the same laws.
The case around the status of whether Birkenstocks qualify to be classified as ‘art’, which has been ongoing for many years, reached a final verdict at the German federal court recently. The court stated that a product cannot be copyrighted if its design is determined by “technical requirements, rules or other constraints”. The court had the concluding remarks that the company simply produces comfortable footwear made from cork – not enough to qualify it as art.
The legal tussle started when Birkenstock filed a lawsuit against three competitors (whose names were not revealed in any court documents) for copying the designs of four Birkenstock products. The company said that the products were copyright-protected as applied art. However, soon the company filed a claim for the products to be recognized as fine art. Under German law, fine art is afforded much stricter IP rights than applied art. If approved, the manufacturer would have received exclusive rights of use over the design. The lawsuit also demanded that the competitors recall and destroy all similar models already sold.
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The case was first heard in 2017 at a regional German court, which sided with Birkenstock and granted its request. The decision was appealed in a higher regional court, which said in 2022 that the company could not establish any artistic achievement to be designated as fine art. Now, the federal German court has upheld the decision.
