Lituania / Casos nacionales
UAB Zbiga v UAB Gintaro baldai, civil case 3K-3-509/2013
Casos nacionales. La inclusión en esta ficha no convierte una referencia extranjera en una decisión nacional. Se conserva el estado y el alcance de la fuente.
Expediente y fuentes
- Nombre
- UAB Zbiga v UAB Gintaro baldai, civil case 3K-3-509/2013
- Cita
- UAB Zbiga v UAB Gintaro baldai, civil case 3K-3-509/2013
- Tribunal
- Supreme Court of Lithuania, Civil Division
- Instancia
- última instancia
- Fechas
- Decisión
- 2013-11-04
- Estado
- resuelto-firmeza-no-verificada
- Resultado
- Cassation dismissed; both lower decisions affirmed, with costs. Final and unappealable.
- Resumen
- Copyright and design protection can coexist, but copyright in an unregistered design still requires original expression. The claimant did not prove that the claimed combination departed from common features of that furniture type or that the accused models copied protected expression. The lower courts’ use of design-law informed-user language was not the proper copyright test, but the evidentiary failure independently sustained dismissal.
- Antecedentes
- Zbiga relied on 2003 and 2006 assignments from designer Z. J. for furniture designs MM-1 and MM-5. It alleged that Gintaro baldai’s Gabija and Tyra models copied those designs and sought an injunction and 52,000 LTL. The drawings captured shape but not colour, material texture or other later asserted elements.
- Historia procesal
- Vilnius Regional Court dismissed the claim on 19 May 2011; the Court of Appeal affirmed on 2 January 2013. Zbiga sought cassation.
- Cuestión jurídica
- Whether unregistered functional furniture designs were original copyright works and whether the defendant copied protected expression rather than common or functional elements.
- Criterio
- Copyright and design protection can coexist, but copyright in an unregistered design still requires original expression. The claimant did not prove that the claimed combination departed from common features of that furniture type or that the accused models copied protected expression. The lower courts’ use of design-law informed-user language was not the proper copyright test, but the evidentiary failure independently sustained dismissal.
- Fundamento decisivo
- Ownership documents and an authorship presumption do not prove originality. Functional and commonplace elements cannot be monopolised without proof of the creator’s individual expression; the claimant must identify what was created and copied.
- Límites
- Human furniture-design dispute predating Cofemel and Brompton. The dismissal turned on proof and commonplace or functional features; it is not a categorical bar for applied art or AI-assisted design.
- Relevancia
- doctrina-general
- Referencias relacionadas
- Peso del precedente
- Negative national base case on functional constraints, proof and expression delimitation. Its 2013 originality vocabulary must be controlled by later CJEU Cofemel/Brompton doctrine. Integración/votación: Algis Norkūnas (presiding and rapporteur), Dalia Vasarienė, Vincas Verseckas. Three-judge panel; no numerical tally, concurrence or dissent is published.
- Fuente
- Referencia
- UAB Zbiga v UAB Gintaro baldai, civil case 3K-3-509/2013
- Enlace
- Consultar fuente
- Autoridad
- Supreme Court of Lithuania, Civil Division
- Tipo
- final national civil copyright judgment; applied-art furniture designs; non-AI
- Localizador
- “Ginčo esmė”; lower-court history; cassation sections on cumulative protection and design/copyright; operative part
- Verificación documentada
- Sí