Major Extension To Furniture Copyright

[custard]

The copyright for "industrially manufactured artistic works", which covers a large amount of the furniture that we may well admire, has been extended, from 25 years, to the life of the designer plus 75 years.

https://www.gov.uk/government/consultat ... on-52-cdpa

Apparently there's also an additional technical twist to all this, under the previous "design rights" legislation it was basically okay to make a copy for your own use, but under the new legislation this makes you liable to prosecution.

 

[bugbear]

Article recently in the Guardian;

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2016/ ... yright-law

BugBear

 

[Phil Pascoe]

must remember to lock the furniture away when the design police come visiting.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

Retailers have been given six months to clear existing stocks ... but if it's illegal to have a copy even for your own use who's going to buy it?

 

[dynax]

just read the article, but way over my head, what does this mean in laymans terms in respect of producing something new for the designer/manufacturer, and does producing a prototype automatically guarantee copyright,

 

[YorkshireMartin]

Hmm. I cannot even begin to imagine the chaos this could cause.

For example, who would hold design rights to floating shelves. Aren't they a relatively new thing?

 

[NazNomad]

It's an EU Regulation ... like we give a sh** what they think now. :-D

 

[transatlantic]

I get really annoyed by the prices these pompous artsy fartsy type people will pay for this "Designer" stuff.

I mean that lamp for £1400! ..really!! aaarrrrrgghhh!!

One of these days I'm going to create a website with some posh sounding name and simple pieces slightly tweaked for the silly designer look charged at ridiculous prices and see what happens.

 

[MIGNAL]

Right. So you want to become a rich ars*hole, just like them.

 

[Jake]

It's an EU Regulation ... like we give a sh** what they think now.

It isn't. It's domestic legislation amending domestic legislation at the behest of the UK government.

The only relevance of EU law is that someone tried to prevent the amendment being made by arguing that the amendments were compatible with EU law by way of judicial review - and lost.

 

[petermillard]

I get really annoyed by the prices these pompous artsy fartsy type people will pay for this "Designer" stuff.
I mean that lamp for £1400! ..really!! aaarrrrrgghhh!!

Why does it bother you? I mean, it doesn't sound like you're planning to buy one, so what possible reason could you have for being annoyed at how other people spend their money? FWIW a client of mine has an original 60s Arco lamp and it's absolutely magnificent - I'd be all over a cheap copy if I had a room of the right proportions, but I don't, so I get to admire his original (and his Eames chairs) whenever I'm around at his home.

One of these days I'm going to create a website with some posh sounding name and simple pieces slightly tweaked for the silly designer look charged at ridiculous prices and see what happens.

Be sure to let us know when it's up & running

Pete

 

[NazNomad]

It isn't. It's domestic legislation amending domestic legislation at the behest of the UK government.

From the 'Guardian' link ... ''... are set to rocket in price, following EU regulations which came into force this week..."

I naturally assumed that what was in the newspaper was factual. :lol: :lol:

 

[Jake]

AFAIK it's wrong, it often is. Just not usually so abysmally as most of its competitors, except insprelling. This is closer to reality: http://www.dezeen.com/2015/02/20/uk-gov ... roduction/

 

[doctor Bob]

I get really annoyed by the prices these pompous artsy fartsy type people will pay for this "Designer" stuff.

I mean that lamp for £1400! ..really!! aaarrrrrgghhh!!

One of these days I'm going to create a website with some posh sounding name and simple pieces slightly tweaked for the silly designer look charged at ridiculous prices and see what happens.

Sour grapes, good luck with that website.
I suspect you have never seen a real piece of "designer" furniture. The quality is usually exceptional, the concept fabulous, not the sort of stuff which is knocked up in a shed in a couple of hours.

 

[YorkshireMartin]

I get really annoyed by the prices these pompous artsy fartsy type people will pay for this "Designer" stuff.

I mean that lamp for £1400! ..really!! aaarrrrrgghhh!!

One of these days I'm going to create a website with some posh sounding name and simple pieces slightly tweaked for the silly designer look charged at ridiculous prices and see what happens.

Sour grapes, good luck with that website.
I suspect you have never seen a real piece of "designer" furniture. The quality is usually exceptional, the concept fabulous, not the sort of stuff which is knocked up in a shed in a couple of hours.

Don't know about you but everything I make has a fabulous concept and is of exceptional quality. The problem is my alarm clock then goes off.

 

[Jake]

I get really annoyed by the prices these pompous artsy fartsy type people will pay for this "Designer" stuff.

I mean that lamp for £1400! ..really!! aaarrrrrgghhh!!

I don't have any really attachment to that design but it is a substantial piece of (if you buy an original) polished and shaped carerra marble, attached to a (guess) 10-12 ft elegantly curved and chromed steel pole and an expensive very nicely spun and chromed metal shade. You can get copies for a lot less but ignoring all the design value, the materials and workmanship are not cheap. I haven't looked but I bet the the best Chinese copies are at least £600 without the quality of materials and finish, or the extra mark-up that the genuine article's retailers will be able to ask compared to the scabbier resellers of copies.

The copy will then not be worth a great deal on resale unless you shark someone into believing it is real, the original should hold at least 50% maybe 75% and should even appreciate with the price of new ones over time unlike the fake.

Not that I would ever pay that for a lamp or that lamp but if someone has the money to keep people in a job making them, hey ho.

 

[lurker]

Regarding design rights generally
This is all well & good, but who is going to tell the chinese or E-bay for that matter?

The market is swamped with dangerous (life threatening) knock off stuff generally bought by folks bypassing normal retail outlets.

 

[lurker]

A few years back I was admiring a really clever wooden bench design at an arty farty exibition.
Beautifully made.
I got talkiing to the designer/maker and asked him if he would mind if I copied it.
He said that would be fine so long as it was just the one off for my own use
He gave me a full set of photographs to help, with one stating I had his permission to copy it.

Always best to ask nicely :lol:
The job is still on my "to do list".

 

[AJB Temple]

I suspect this legislation will not have a great impact. Fashion designers appear to battle this constantly, where a designer produces something and near clones are on the high street shortly afterwards.

 

[Wizard9999]

I suspect that anything sold / bought before the extension of the period would not suddenly become illegal (the law is rarely retrospective) and therefore by extension anything bought in the transitional period would also be OK.

I am a fan of well designed furniture, I am sitting here writing this in my kitchen sitting on an Eames DSR chair around a Super Elipical table. Some may call it snobbery but I actually get pleasure from some of the designer furniture I own, however, I also have my fair share of "pieces" from IKEA and what I thought was (before its demise in the UK) the much better ILVA. This kind of sums it up for me, it is again horses for courses.

I may be wrong but I suspect the likes of Vitra will lose very few sales to the websites that sell the low price copies as very many of the people buying from these sites could not or would not chose to pay the cost of the original. I know there are some well off people who buy the cheaper copies, Samantha Cameron apparently for one, but even if they have the money that does not mean they would choose to buy the same design of product if they only had the option of the original at a considerably higher price.

I do wonder about this law though. It already protects the designer and already gives a period after their death. I do not know how long the licence period is that companies like Vitra have, but if / when it needs to be renewed presumably it will be the offspring of the designers who benefit from licence renewal fees. Whilst I would 100% support the rights of a designer to protect their designs while they benefit from the income their designs generate I am not so worried about their children and grand children. But then if my thinking about the lack of overlap in the markets is right maybe it will ultimately make no difference to licence fees.

But thinking back to my DSR chair, which retail at £230 a piece at Aram. How ironic that when designed it was as part of a low cost furniture design competition, so I do wonder how Charles and Ray Eames would feel about these websites, maybe not how we might at first imagine.

Terry.