Interlego AG v Tyco Industries Inc
A copy of an existing work that involves skill and labour but no material alteration of the work is not original, so new drawings of Lego bricks did not create a new copyright.
Facts
Interlego, the manufacturer of Lego bricks, had made design drawings of its bricks. Its patents and design rights in the bricks had expired. It then produced new drawings of the bricks, with minor changes and new dimensions, and claimed copyright in the new drawings, to prevent Tyco from making similar bricks. Tyco argued that the new drawings were not original.
Legal principle
The Privy Council held that the new drawings were not original, so no new copyright subsisted in them. Lord Oliver said that skill, labour or judgment merely in the process of copying cannot confer originality, and that there must be some element of material alteration or embellishment which suffices to make the totality of the work an original work. The changes to the drawings were minor and technical, so they were not enough to make the new drawings original. Allowing new copyright to arise from minor changes would allow copyright in old works to be extended indefinitely.
Related cases on copyright: subsistence, originality and authorship
- Cofemel Sociedade de Vestuário SA v G-Star Raw CV Case C-683/17, EU:C:2019:721
- Creation Records Ltd v News Group Newspapers Ltd [1997] EMLR 444
- Exxon Corp v Exxon Insurance Consultants International Ltd [1982] Ch 119
- Fisher v Brooker [2009] UKHL 41, [2009] 1 WLR 1764
- Football Dataco Ltd v Yahoo! UK Ltd Case C-604/10, EU:C:2012:115
- George Hensher Ltd v Restawile Upholstery (Lancs) Ltd [1976] AC 64
- Hadley v Kemp [1999] EMLR 589
- Infopaq International A/S v Danske Dagblades Forening Case C-5/08, [2009] ECR I-6569
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