Source: https://www.mediainstitute.org/2016/06/29/courts-have-twisted-themselves-into-knots-u-s-copyright-protection-for-applied-art/
Timestamp: 2019-04-26 02:20:30+00:00

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Courts have twisted themselves into knots trying to create a test to effectively ascertain whether the artistic aspects of a useful article can be identified separately from and exist independently of the article’s utilitarian function.
Varsity Brands, Inc. v. Star Athletica, LLC, 799 F.3d 468, 478 (6th Cir. 2015), cert. granted, 194 L. Ed. 2d 829 (2016), quoting, Inhale, Inc. v. Starbuzz Tobacco, Inc., 755 F.3d 1038, 1041 n.2 (9th Cir. 2014), quoting, Masquerade Novelty, Inc. v. Unique Indus., 912 F.2d 663, 670 (3rd Cir. 1990).
The U.S. Copyright Act distinguishes “useful articles” from works whose function is “merely to portray the appearance of the article or to convey information.”6 The latter are PGS works (or, in the case of works whose function is to convey information, other kinds of works of authorship, such as literary works) in themselves, and there is no need to undertake an inquiry into the “separability” of aesthetic and useful elements, because the utility at issue, such as a religious painting’s stimulation of spiritual contemplation,7 is not the kind of usefulness that the statute reserves to the patent system (or to the public domain). Similarly, the depiction of a useful article, such as a model airplane or a drawing of a bottle, is not itself a useful article. The statute, however, makes clear that a protected representation of a useful article gives the author no rights in the article depicted.8 A blueprint for constructing a car is not a “useful article” because its functions are to portray the appearance of the car, and to convey information about how to build it. The car, once built, however, is a useful article; any copyright would be limited to elements, such as a hood ornament, that are separable from the car’s utilitarian aspects.
In Varsity Brands, the Sixth Circuit ruled that team insignia applied to cheerleader uniforms (pictured below)13 were separable and protectable from the overall design of the uniforms. While the court found separability because “the arrangement of stripes, chevrons, color blocks, and zigzags are ‘wholly unnecessary to the performance of’ the garment’s ability to cover the body, permit free movement, and wick moisture,”14 it could instead have treated those elements as fabric design, a category long recognized as a pictorial or graphic work.15 Copyright does not protect the garments into which the design-bearing fabric is cut, but neither does the fashioning of the fabric into an article of clothing cancel out the copyright of the design imprinted thereon.
Varsity Brands is not the only “conceptual separability” case that would better have been analyzed as an instance of a pre-existing PGS work affixed “in or on” a useful article. For example, in Home Legend v. Mannington Mills,18 the useful article was floorboards made of compacted resin and sawdust, onto which the plaintiff had laminated paper painted to resemble “distressed” woodgrain so that the floorboards would convey the appearance of true wood planks (pictured below)19. The court held the design separable. One may easily envision lifting off the design (as indeed it had been pasted on), without affecting the flooring, other than aesthetically. That the ersatz wood grain made unsightly pressed sawdust floorboards more aesthetically desirable undoubtedly affected their commercial appeal, but aesthetic “functionality” is not a utilitarian function in the copyright sense. The court could instead have recognized that the “work” allegedly infringed was the depiction of the wood grain, not the floorboards onto which the pictures had been glued. Like Varsity Brands, Home Legend could have avoided inquiry into conceptual separability had it perceived the case as an instance of reproducing a PGS work on a useful article.
Disposing of Varsity Brands on the ground that the case does not require determining which aesthetic “features” of a “useful article” “can be identified separately from and are capable of existing independently of” the article’s function would leave interpretation of physical or “conceptual” separability for another day. But that approach would also usefully remind litigants and lower courts first to examine carefully whether the work whose copyright is at issue is in fact a “useful article” as statutorily defined (to which the separability test applies), or is instead a PGS work in its own right, reproduced “in or on” a useful article. In the latter instance, the copyright inheres in the pre-existing PGS work; the useful article is not itself a “work of authorship” but its reproduction and distribution come within the scope of the exclusive rights encompassed by the PGS work’s copyright.
* This column is based on portions of the same-named article forthcoming in Volume 40 of the Columbia Journal of Law & the Arts. Many thanks to Robert E. Bishop, Columbia Law School class of 2017, for most helpful research assistance, and to Lionel Bently, Paolo Marzano, and Antoon Quaedvleig for trenchant critiques and valuable suggestions, and to participants in a staff seminar at the University of Johannesburg law faculty for probing questions.
1. 17 U.S.C. Sec. 102(a)(5).
2. 17 U.S.C. Sec. 101.
3. For a cross-IP discipline view that encompasses design protection, see Peter Lee and Madhavi Sunder, The Law of Look and Feel, UC Davis Legal Studies Research Paper Series (February 2016), available at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2733780. For designs that acquire secondary meaning, trademark law may afford more useful recourse than copyright or design patent law. See, e.g., Dan Hunter and Suzannah Wood, The Laws of Design in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, forthcoming Adelaide L. Rev. (2016).
4. At the time of passage of the 1976 Act, the terms were 50 years pma, or 75 years after first publication.
5. See Jane C. Ginsburg & Robert A. Gorman, Copyright: Concepts and Insights 50 (Foundation Press 2012).
When hung on a wall, a painting may evoke a myriad of human emotions, but we would not say that the painting is not copyrightable because its artistic elements could not be separated from the emotional effect its creator hoped it would have on persons viewing it. The utilitarian nature of an animal nose mask or a painting of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ inheres solely in its appearance, regardless of the fact that the nose mask’s appearance is intended to evoke mirth and the painting’s appearance a feeling of religious reverence.
8. 17 U.S.C. Sec. 113(b).
10. For detailed discussion of that policy choice, see Viva Moffat, The Copyright/Patent Boundary, 48 U. Richmond L. Rev. 611, 638-39 (2014) (the intention to confine functional features of useful articles to the patent realm is implicit in the statute and the legislative history).
11. 17 U.S.C. Sec. 101 (defining pictorial, graphic and sculptural works).
12. See H.R. Rep. No. 94-1476, at 55 (1976).
13. 799 F.3d at 473 (image located in opinion, but no additional source information available).
15. See, e.g., Knitwaves, Inc. v. Lollytogs Ltd. (Inc.), 71 F.3d 996 (2nd Cir. 1995); Eve of Milady v. Impression Bridal, Inc., 957 F. Supp. 48 (S.D.N.Y. 1997).
By contrast, In Jovani Fashion, Ltd. v. Fiesta Fashions, 500 Fed.Appx. 42 (2nd Cir. 2012), the Second Circuit affirmed the District Court’s dismissal of a complaint alleging that defendant competitor infringed the design of plaintiff’s prom dress. According to the District Court, plaintiff “conceded that the individual elements of the dress (such as the pattern of sequins) were not copyrightable in isolation. Jovani acknowledged that there is no discernible pattern of sequins … Jovani has conceded that it is not claiming a copyright in the fabric designs of its dress.” Jovani Fashion, Ltd. v. Cinderella Divine, Inc., 808 F. Supp. 2d 542, (S.D.N.Y. 2011). The sequin pattern’s lack of originality indicates that, unlike Varsity Brands, which involved “multiple graphic designs that appear on the cheerleading uniforms and warm-ups they sell,” 799 F.3d at 470, Jovani could not have been reconceptualized as a fabric design case.
16. 799 F.3d at 491.
17. The court acknowledged that “If the design is not the design of a useful article, then there is no need to inquire into whether there are “pictorial, graphic, or sculptural features that can be identified separately from, and are capable of existing independently of, the utilitarian aspects of the [useful] article.” 17 U.S.C. § 101.” But it then stated that the design at issue was the design of the uniform rather than “the graphic features of each design [uniform].” Id. at 487.
18. 784 F.3d 1404 (11th Cir. 2015).
19. Photograph of Flooring, http://www.trademarkandcopyrightlawblog.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/9/2015/05/wood.png (image located on website, but no additional source information available). Home Legend sold the Distressed Maple Mendocino, on the left, while Mannington Mills sold the Glazed Maple, on the right.

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