#HTE

UK Finally Gets With the Furniture Design Copyright Times

By one estimate, there are 54 factories in China producing unlicensed replicas of Eames furniture. While they’ll probably find a ready market all around the world—$520 for a knockoff Eames Lounge vs. $8,900 for the real deal makes it a no-brainer for the unscrupulous—in the UK they’ll find a ready market and no police intervention.

That’s because Britain’s design copyright laws deviate wildly from the European Union’s. In the UK, the rule was that 25 years after a designer dies, his work goes into the public domain. Charles Eames passed in 1978 while co-designer and wife Ray passed ten years later, so it’s been legal to sell Eames knockoffs since 2013. For the EU, however, the rule is 70 years after a designer’s death.

Well, British lawmakers are finally getting with the times. Yielding to pressure from international furniture manufacturers, they’ve finally stretched it to the EU-standard 70 years, conferring the same protection to mass-produced furniture as is enjoyed by artistic works, books and sound recordings.

It was recently announced that all knock-off/replica furniture manufacturers selling in the UK have just six months to liquidate their stock, because after that, the hammer’s coming down. Britons who aren’t picky about the provenance of their design classics have until the end of January 2017 to get their unlicensed Eameses, Jacobsens and Casitglionis on the cheap. And ironically, that may drive the price up.

Via The Guardian and the UK Copyright Service