L’unité de l’art nell’ordinamento giuridico italiano. Le conseguenze della sentenza Cofemel

In the Cofemel decision the CJEU declared that the criteria needed for assessing whether subject matter is protected as a work under copyright law are the same for design objects as for other work categories. This decision doesn’t permit anymore Member States to exclude works of applied art from copyright protection if they are original in the sense that they are an author’s own intellectual creation, regardless of presence of a particular degree of aesthetic or artistic value. The article argues that if the decision of the European Court is binding on national courts, the Italian courts will have to implement the principles affirmed in the Cofemel ruling and therefore disapply the Italian requirement of artistic value, declaring it incompatible with European law.