On August 20, 2025, in a copyright infringement case involving reproduction of a decorative temple roof design, Taiwan’s Intellectual Property and Commercial Court (the “IPC Court”) dismissed the lawsuit, ruling that the asserted work was mass-produced industrial product, which lacks the required originality.
The Plaintiff alleged that he was the author of a relief sculpture (the “Work”, see below), a decorative design for the roof of temple or altar. According to Plaintiff’s complaint, the Defendants infringed the Plaintiff’s copyright by, without prior permission, mass-producing the Work and selling the unauthorized replicas.
The IPC Court dismissed the Plaintiff’s infringement claim, holding that:
1. To be eligible for copyright protection, the Work must possess minimum degree of originality. While the threshold is lower than that for patent novelty, the work must reflect a degree of human intellect and personal expression. If the work is merely an industrial product manufactured via mass production without meaningful human intellectual input, such work should not be eligible for copyright protection.
2. According to the Plaintiff’s own testimony, he only created a two-dimensional sketch of the decorative temple roof design. It was another wood sculptor who created a wooden model based on that sketch. Subsequently, the Work was manufactured via mass production based on the wooden sculpture.
3. In view of the above, the Work, in the Court’s view, was only an industrial product lacking originality, because it did not reflect sufficient human intellectual creation. By contrast, the wooden sculpture created based on Plaintiff’s sketch should be the one that possessed minimum degree of originality that would be eligible for copyright protection.
4. Given the absence of originality, the Court found the Work asserted by the Plaintiff not copyrightable, and dismissed Plaintiff’s claim accordingly.
Source:
113-Ming-Chu-Su-Zi No. 53 (IPC Court, August 20, 2025)
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