Bezpecnostni Softwarova Asociace [2011] ECJ 14

• Czech organisation, Claimant, wished to set up licencing scheme for computer software, which included right to transmit works by cable TV.

• Each computer programme had its own ‘graphical user interface’ (GUI). GUI was an interactive interface, i.e. the means by which users of the software actually made use of the software; involved users clicking on various icons on the screen in order to be able to use the relevant computer software.

• Issue was whether copyright could subsist in GUI.

Held

Intellectual Creation

• Infopaq test affirmed.

• Thus GUI can be protected by copyright under Infosoc Directive if it is its author’s own intellectual creation.

Limited Expression

• Where an idea is only capable of being expressed in a very limited number of technological or functional manners, the expression of that idea is not original.

• Thus where the expression of an idea is dictated by that idea’s technical function, expression cannot be an “intellectual creation”

• If this were not case, computer companies could get monopoly on basic concepts

• On facts, majority of elements comprising the GUI have a functional purpose

  • I.e. are designed simply to facilitate the use of the computer programme in question

  • E.g. the drop-down menus, cursor icon on screen which moves when the mouse is moved.

• Thus national court must exclude any elements of GUI that have functional purpose from their assessment of whether GUi as a whole is an intellectual creation.

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• Infopaq International A/S v Danske Dagblades Forening