{"id":1953,"date":"2017-07-27T22:26:37","date_gmt":"2017-07-27T20:26:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bdl-ip.com\/\/?p=1953"},"modified":"2020-04-21T13:19:04","modified_gmt":"2020-04-21T11:19:04","slug":"2017-07-can-the-taste-of-a-food-product-be-a-copyright-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bdl-ip.com\/en\/2017-07-can-the-taste-of-a-food-product-be-a-copyright-work\/","title":{"rendered":"2017\/07 > Can the taste of a food product be a copyright work?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color: #013ca6;\"><strong>Will the Court of Justice of the European Union give its recipe?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Dennis Voerman is the creator of a very successful spread named &#8220;Heks&#8217;nkaas&#8221;. In 2011, he assigned to a company called Levola the<span style=\"color: #013ca6;\"><strong> copyright<\/strong> <\/span>relating to the recipe, its method of preparation and the taste features of his product.<\/p>\n<p>Because a company Smilde launched a competing spread \u2018Witte Wievenkaas\u2019 similar to its own spread, Levola sued the latter for <span style=\"color: #013ca6;\"><strong>copyright<\/strong><\/span> infringement.<\/p>\n<p>Levola requested for Smilde to be prohibited from manufacturing and marketing the \u2018Witte Wievenkaas\u2019 spread on the grounds that it was reproducing the original taste of Levola\u2019s product. The company argued that the product, due to a particular combination of specific tastes and unique \u201cmouth-feel\u201d caused by its viscosity and its consistency, would cause the same impression on the consumer\u2019s sense of taste.<\/p>\n<p>On June 10, 2015, the Dutch court of first instance rejected these claims on the grounds that Levola had not specified which element or combination of elements of the product\u2019s taste were original and were imprinted with the author\u2019s personality, adding that it was nto up to the Court to proceed with a testing session.<\/p>\n<p>This issue is somewhat reminiscent of the question of protection for the smell of a perfume which, even though it has not been decided by the Court of justice, has been highly debated.<\/p>\n<p>Hearing the case on appeal, the judges first proceeded with a comprehensive study of the applicable legislation and case law.<\/p>\n<p>After having cited <span style=\"color: #013ca6;\"><a style=\"color: #013ca6;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.wto.org\/english\/docs_e\/legal_e\/27-trips_04_e.htm#droit\">Article 9 (1) of the WTO Agreements<\/a><\/span>, ratified by Council Decision of 22 December 1994, they recall the provisions of <span style=\"color: #013ca6;\">Article 2 (1) of the Berne Convention<\/span> (Paris Act of 24 July 1971) for the protection of literary and artistic works, to which the various European Union member state are parties, and which define as protected works &#8220;all products in the literary, scientific and artistic domain irrespective of their mode or form of expression &#8220;.<\/p>\n<p>Then they referred to provisions in the <span style=\"color: #013ca6;\"><a style=\"color: #013ca6;\" href=\"https:\/\/eur-lex.europa.eu\/legal-content\/EN\/TXT\/PDF\/?uri=CELEX:32001L0029&amp;from=FR\">Directive 2001\/29 \/ EC of the European Parliament<\/a><\/span> and Council of 22 May 2001 regarding the harmonization of certain <span style=\"color: #013ca6;\"><strong>copyright<\/strong> <\/span>aspect and related rights in the information society, and to the Infopaq decision of 16 July 2009 (CJEU, 16 July 2009 n \u00b0 <span style=\"color: #013ca6;\"><a style=\"color: #013ca6;\" href=\"http:\/\/curia.europa.eu\/juris\/document\/document.jsf?text=&amp;docid=72482&amp;pageIndex=0&amp;doclang=EN&amp;mode=lst&amp;dir=&amp;occ=first&amp;part=1&amp;cid=782938\">C-5\/08<\/a><\/span>), to indicate that <strong><span style=\"color: #013ca6;\">copyright<\/span><\/strong> is intended to apply only to \u2018an author\u2019s own intellectual creation\u2019.<\/p>\n<p>Turning then to national law, they mentioned a decision of the Dutch supreme court which ruled that the human limits for distinguishing odors, and the fact that perception differs from one individual to the other, do not prevent an odor from being such a creation as long as it consists in a production that is perceptible to humans, with individual and original character that bears the imprint of its author\u2019s personality. (HR, June 16, 2006, LJN AU8940, Kecofa \/ Lanc\u00f4me).<\/p>\n<p>One will recall that in France the Supreme Court requires a creation to take a physical and material form. Accordingly, French Judges have refused to acknowledge <span style=\"color: #013ca6;\"><strong>copyright<\/strong><\/span> protected for a perfume because \u201c<strong><span style=\"color: #013ca6;\">copyright<\/span><\/strong> protects creations in their perceptible form, only insofar as this is identifiable with sufficient precision to enable its communication; that the fragrance of a perfume which &#8211; apart from its manufacturing process, which is not an intellectual work &#8211; does not take a form having this characteristic and cannot therefore benefit from <strong><span style=\"color: #013ca6;\">copyright<\/span><\/strong> protection\u201d. (Cass. Com., 10 December 2013, appeal 11-19872).<\/p>\n<p>For their part, the\u00a0judge s of the Arnhem-Leeuwarden Court of Appeal in their decision of 23 of May 2017 (Case No. 200.178.423) decided that there were serious uncertainties in relation to knowing whether the taste of a food product could be protected through <strong><span style=\"color: #013ca6;\">copyright<\/span> <\/strong>and that a decision of the ECJ was necessary for allowing them to decide the case at stake.<\/p>\n<p>They therefore raised the following questions (Case n\u00b0 272772) :<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Does the law of the European Union prohibit the <span style=\"color: #013ca6;\"><strong>taste of a food<\/strong><\/span> product , taken as an author own\u2019 s intellectual work, from being protected by <strong><span style=\"color: #013ca6;\">copyright<\/span><\/strong> ?<\/li>\n<li>If so, what are the requirements for such protection?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>The CJEU will first have to define what can constitute a work protectable through <span style=\"color: #013ca6;\"><strong>copyright<\/strong><\/span> and thus, if a creation that is perceived by taste can be considered as such, before contemplating the conditions for its protection.<\/p>\n<p>Moreover, a creation that can be perceived by taste or smell is characterized by its potential instability and the subjective character of its perception by the consumer. So the court will have to decide whether these elements prevent <strong><span style=\"color: #013ca6;\">copyright<\/span> <\/strong>protection.<\/p>\n<p>Similarly, in defining the author&#8217;s exclusive rights Articles 2 and 5 of Directive 2001\/29 \/ EC refer to the concept of reproduction, with various exceptions. The Court will also have to decide if this construction is compatible with the protection by <strong><span style=\"color: #013ca6;\">copyright of the taste of a food<\/span><\/strong> product.<\/p>\n<p>It will be interesting to see if the Court of Justice takes up this issue, and opens up the prospect of protection for these atypical creations that are perfumes or food products.<\/p>\n<p>It will also be recalled that the <span style=\"color: #013ca6;\"><a style=\"color: #013ca6;\" href=\"https:\/\/eur-lex.europa.eu\/legal-content\/EN\/TXT\/PDF\/?uri=OJ:L:2017:154:FULL&amp;from=FR\">new Trade Mark Regulation (EU) of the European Parliament<\/a> <\/span>and Council of 16 December 2015 deleted the requirement for graphical representation when filing trademarks and refers now to a representation that enables competent authorities and the public to determine precisely and clearly the object of the claimed protection. As a result, it is not excluded that odors could be filed as trademarks in the future.<\/p>\n<p>A revolution is may be on the way&#8230;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Will the Court of Justice of the European Union give its recipe? Dennis Voerman is the creator of a very successful spread named &#8220;Heks&#8217;nkaas&#8221;. In 2011, he assigned to a company called Levola the copyright relating to the recipe, its method of preparation and the taste features of his product. Because a company Smilde launched [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[206],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1953","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ip-news"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>2017\/07 &gt; Can the taste of a food product be a copyright work? - BDL<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.bdl-ip.com\/en\/2017-07-can-the-taste-of-a-food-product-be-a-copyright-work\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"2017\/07 &gt; Can the taste of a food product be a copyright work? - BDL\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Will the Court of Justice of the European Union give its recipe? 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