Following the European Court of Justice’s (“ECJ”) December 2025 ruling in the joined cases Mio AB et al. and konektra, the German Federal Court of Justice (“BGH”) has now applied those principles to one of the best known pieces of modern furniture design, the USM Haller modular furniture system. In its judgment of 2 July 2026 (I ZR 96/22) the BGH overturned the decision of the Higher Regional Court Düsseldorf (“OLG Düsseldorf”) that had denied copyright protection.
In particular, the BGH applied the ECJ’s ruling that objects of applied art are subject to no higher originality threshold than other categories of copyrighted works.
The decision is one of the first copyright rulings after Mio and konektra, and the BGH has taken the opportunity to review and partly recalibrate its earlier case law.
1. As it Happened – the Lower Courts' Decisions
The claimant USM has marketed the USM Haller system, where high-gloss round tubes are joined by spherical nodes into frames holding metal panels, allowing the resulting units to be freely combined and stacked, for decades. The defendant konektra operates an online shop offering spare and expansion parts that match USM’s components in shape and largely in colour. The claimant sued on the grounds of copyright infringement, alternatively on the basis unfair competition law, seeking injunctive relief, disclosure and damages.
The BGH has now ruled on the copyright claims only. The claims based on unfair competition law will only be decided if the appeal court should again deny claims based on copyright.
In its decision of first instance, the Regional Court Düsseldorf (“LG Düsseldorf”) largely granted claims on copyright grounds, whereas on appeal, the OLG Düsseldorf rejected copyright claims and granted only unfair-competition relief due to unfair imitation. Specifically, OLG Düsseldorf held that the USM Haller system was not a copyright-protected work of applied art, since its design features were either drawn from the pre-existing pool of forms, or determined by technical considerations that left no room for creative freedom. In December 2023, the BGH suspended the proceedings and referred questions on the concept of a copyrighted “work” to the ECJ. As explained in our December 2025 briefing, the ECJ answered these questions in its Mio and konektra judgment of 4 December 2025 (C-580/23 and C-795/23), stating that (a) works of applied art face no higher requirements for copyright protection, (b) originality must be assessed objectively from the product itself, and (c) that in order to establish copyright infringement, it needs to bs shown that specific recognisable creative elements have been reproduced in the final product, whereas the overall visual impression and the degree of originality is irrelevant.
2. Protection and Infringement Recalibrated: The BGH’s Decision and the Overturning of OLG Düsseldorf’s Decision
The BGH set aside the appeal court’s judgment and referred the case back for a new decision. It held that the OLG Düsseldorf’s reasoning for denying copyright protection needed to be reconsidered, based on the criteria as established by the ECJ and as interpreted the BGH.
2.1 Requirements for Copyright Protection
First, the BGH clarified that when assessing the copyrightability of a work of applied art, no higher threshold may be imposed on the requirement of originality and the author’s free and creative choices, than for other categories of works. The OLG had mistakenly read the ECJ's Cofemel decision (ECJ, ruling 12. September 2019, C-683/17) — that “cumulative” design and copyright protection is only possible "in certain cases" — as an instruction to raise the bar for works of applied art. The BGH in line with the ECJ stated that design and copyright pursue different objectives and are subject to different rules: While the key criteria to qualify for design protection are “novelty”, “individuality” and a different overall visual impression, copyright protection requires that the work is an “original”, meaning the result of the author’s own intellectual creation, and that it reflects the author’s “free and creative choice”. Works of applied art, i.e. utility objects, need to fulfil practical functions and therefore inherently leave their authors less room for creative decisions. The legal standard, however, remains identical across all categories of works.
Second, the BGH rejected that the OLG relied on the subjective intention of the author when assessing originality. Contrary to the OLG’s interpretation, originality must be objectively examined in a uniform way for all categories of works, starting from the specific object presented. The author’s subjective perspective is not decisive to make a work an “original”. This follows the copyright principle that ideas itself are not be protected, only actual expressions of an idea. In this framework, an author’s intention belongs to the realm of unprotected ideas and matters only where expressed in an objective manner in the final work itself.
Third, the BGH did not concur with the OLG Düsseldorf’s interpretation, that circumstances arising after the creation (e.g. presentation of the design in art exhibitions or museums, or its recognition in expert circles) are irrelevant. In line with the ECJ’s decision, the BGH held that the OLG’s approach applied an overly narrow legal standard. If a work has been publicly recognized, this may serve as an indication of its originality. While such criteria may be assessed as an indication of creativity, they are, as the ECJ emphasized in Mio and konektra, neither necessary nor decisive.
Fourth, the BGH confirmed that the OLG Düsseldorf was correct in holding that the aesthetic effect of a design, in and of itself, does not establish copyright protection.
2.2 Copyright Infringement: No Requirement of the same “Overall Visual Impression”
The BGH further ruled that — should the OLG Düsseldorf now find that the USM Haller system enjoys copyright protection —, it must assess infringement in line with the principles established by the ECJ, i.e. only the reproduction of concretely identifiable creative elements of the earlier work that establish its originality leads to an infringement. Those elements must be recognisably reproduced in the challenged object. Only those specific features identified as the creative basis of copyright protection can then be used to measure infringement.
Contrary to its earlier case law (e.g. in the 2022 Porsche decision), the BGH stated it is not necessary to compare the overall impression of the competing objects. Rather, under copyright law, it must be assessed whether the specific elements establishing the earlier work's originality remain recognisable in the new object. That said, the allegedly infringing object must still be considered as a whole and not merely the copied elements in isolation.
Finally, the BGH confirmed that once protection is established, the scope of protection does not depend on the degree of originality. Still, where the degree of originality is limited by technical restrictions (as can be the case in everyday objects), the scope of protection may practically be limited – up to situations where only an exact copy might be seen as infringing.
3. The Upcoming Decision of the Appeal Court and Further Takeaways
The OLG Düsseldorf must now re-examine the originality of the USM Haller system in line with the standard as established by the ECJ and the BGH. While the BGH gives detailed guidance to the appeal court, the outcome in these cases will still be fact-specific and be decided on a case-by-case basis. A core difficulty will be to draw the fine line between features dictated by technical necessity and free creative choices, albeit within technical restraints. Under the ECJ’s framework, creativity cannot be presumed and product features that are determined by technical function lack creative character; on the other hand, the use of an existing pool of forms as such does not exclude originality.
In addition, the OLG Düsseldorf must now give proper weight to objective indicators that may include indicators arising after the work’s creation, provided that such aspects may not be seen as criteria and requirements for protection. A decisive question will thus be whether the combination and configuration of pre-existing elements, e.g. the metal grid, the modular structure, the proportional relationship between tubes and nodes, and the visual coherence of the assembled system, reflect free and creative choices that reflect the authors' personality in the furniture system beyond mere technical necessity.
On a practical level, the decision includes important learnings for litigation. Claimants seeking copyright protection will aim to argue protection and infringement as specifically as possible, and will be well advised to document the creative process early on. Defendants, on the other side, will find in the BGH’s decision a number of aspects allowing them to challenge protection. Clearly, the case law involving works of applied art will continue to evolve.
