The claimant settled upon a combination of colours to identify its goods. It then began an action against the defendants claiming unregistered design right and artistic copyright in the combination of colours.
Held: The mere combination of colours could not be protected in this way. Unregsistered design right did not exist in the juxtaposition of colours alone. The Mark Wilkinson Furniture Case did not say such an arrangement must have either design right or artistic copyright protection. The Court must look to the application of the words in each case to see whether there was a gap. Furthermore the choice of colours was commonplace, which did not mean that the entire design would be.
Judges:
Lord Justice Mance Lord Justice Sedley Lord Justice Jacob
Citations:
Times 28-Sep-2004, [2004] EWCA Civ 886, [2005] RPC 6
Links:
Statutes:
Copyrights Designs and patents Act 1988 213(2)
Jurisdiction:
England and Wales
Citing:
Cited – Mark Wilkinson Furniture Ltd v Woodcraft Designs (Radcliffe) Ltd ChD 13-Oct-1997
Design right is limited to shape excluding any surface decoration. There is no infringement of design right by copying only the surface decoration. ‘The design in which the plaintiff primarily claims design right is now pleaded as ‘the whole . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Intellectual Property
Updated: 18 November 2022; Ref: scu.198843