Protection of furniture from copying by unscrupulous competitors can be regulated by the laws “On Copyright and Related Rights”, “Patent Law of the Russian Federation” (regulates the protection of inventions, utility models and industrial designs) and the law “On Trademarks, Service Marks and Product Names”.
The object of copyright, in accordance with Art. 1259 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation, are works of furniture design if they are of a creative nature. That is, the created furniture samples must: 1) be the result of creative activity (the furniture must have its own author/authors and contain elements of novelty and originality); 2) exist in some objective form (in the form of sketches, drawings, drawings and/or finished furniture samples).
Also accepted as design are: design, project, development, drawing, plan and sketches, designs of industrial products. That is, design can mean not only the appearance of a product, but also complex industrial design. Unfinished samples of furniture in the form of sketches, projects or models, as well as its individual elements (fittings, shelves, cabinets, etc.) are also subject to copyright protection.
It should be noted that copyright arises in the process of creating a work through the creative work of the author, does not require special registration and represents: 1) personal non-property (right of authorship, right to a name, right to protect reputation) rights that belong to the author of the work and cannot be alienated; 2) property rights (the right to reproduce, the right to distribute, the right to process, etc.) rights that can legally be transferred to other persons by concluding an alienation agreement, a license agreement or a franchise agreement. It should be remembered (Article 14 “On Copyright and Related Rights”) that if the author creates a work as part of his official duties in an organization, the copyright property rights to the created works belong to the employer.
Copyright is valid during the life of the author and 70 years after his death, and if there are several authors, then 70 years after the death of the last author who survived the other co-authors.
In cases of a conflict of interest, photographs or other images of furniture, filming, screenshots indicating the date of their creation and time can serve as evidence of authorship in court.
If violations of rights to a work are detected, the author or other copyright holder may, in accordance with paragraph 3 of Art. 1252 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation to require from the violator:
- compensation in the amount of ten thousand rubles to five million rubles at the discretion of the court, based on the nature of the violation, and regardless of the presence or absence of losses from the copyright holder;
- double the cost of counterfeit copies of the work.
In addition, along with administrative liability (Part 1 of Article 7.12 of the Code of Administrative Offenses of the Russian Federation), violation of copyright may also entail criminal liability (Article 146 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation).
The disadvantage of copyrighting a unique furniture design is the difficulty of collecting evidence in cases where an unscrupulous competitor has copied the furniture incompletely, adding only some changes. For this reason, it will not be easy to prove the fact of illegal processing of a protected work.
