How a Düsseldorf court reconciled EU and German copyright doctrine in a dispute over guitar replicas
By Carolin Thurner, Attorney-at-Law at BARDEHLE PAGENBERG
When the CJEU handed down its landmark Mio/konektra ruling on 4 December 2025 (joined Cases C-580/23 and C-795/23), it reshaped the legal landscape for copyright in works of applied art — but left open how national courts would apply those principles in practice. Just weeks later, the Regional Court of Düsseldorf provided the first answer.
In a default judgment of 22 December 2025 (14c O 64/25), the court held that the body of the iconic Fender Stratocaster electric guitar, designed by Leo Fender in 1954, qualifies as a copyright-protected work — and that a Chinese company selling near-identical replicas on AliExpress infringed that right.
The case is significant not for its outcome, which was straightforward given the near-identical reproduction, but for the doctrinal groundwork it lays.
Recapping the Mio/konektra Framework
The CJEU’s decision addressed three fundamental issues regarding applied art and copyright.
It confirmed that no elevated originality threshold applies to objects of applied art compared to other categories of works, putting a definitive end to the “tier theory” debate. It further required courts to actively identify free and creative choices in the shape of the object, rather than presuming creativity or relying on aesthetic appeal, the author’s intent, or recognition by professional circles.
Most consequentially for infringement analysis, the CJEU held that the “overall impression” comparison belongs to design law, not copyright. The copyright-specific test asks whether creative elements of the original have been recognisably incorporated into the allegedly infringing object.
How Düsseldorf Applied the New Test
Harmonisation of European and German Standards
Rather than treating the CJEU’s requirements as a departure from German law, the Düsseldorf court positioned them as compatible with the Federal Court of Justice’s (FCJ) existing approach.
The court drew on the FCJ’s Birkenstocksandale ruling (20 February 2025, I ZR 16/24), which had clarified that the German threshold for “artistic achievement” simply means a creative, original output reflecting the author’s individual personality. Placed alongside the CJEU’s Mio/konektra standard — an author’s own intellectual creation reflecting that author’s personality through free creative choices — the court found no material gap between the two formulations.
Whether the FCJ will eventually drop the “artistic achievement” language was deliberately left open — a pragmatic approach.
The Stratocaster Body as a Protected Work
The court classified the Stratocaster body as a work of applied art under German copyright law and grounded this classification in a detailed formal analysis:
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- Soft, edgeless contours evoking organic, anthropomorphic associations
- Asymmetric S-curves producing a sense of dynamic movement
- Horns of unequal length suggesting a stretching gesture
- Three-dimensional shaping with selective flattening adding sculptural depth
- A pickguard and cable outlet that echo and accentuate the body’s contours
Critically, the court situated these choices against the prior art landscape of 1954, concluding that the design represented something fundamentally new. Only Fender’s own earlier instruments hinted at the asymmetric vocabulary that reached its full expression in the Stratocaster. The court described the result as “an outstanding, free creative achievement” clearly bearing the imprint of its author.
The Infringement Test: Overall Impression vs. Recognisability
This is where the ruling breaks new doctrinal ground.
Under the FCJ’s previous framework (cf. Vitrinenleuchte, 2023), infringement turned on whether copyright-protected elements “faded” in the new design when comparing the respective overall impressions. The CJEU, however, declared the overall impression irrelevant for copyright, replacing it with recognisability of individual creative elements.
The Düsseldorf court navigated between these positions with a practical synthesis: because creative choices frequently reside in the combination of design elements — and it is precisely that combination that carries the author’s personal stamp — examining those elements in their interplay remains necessary. The test shifts from “overall impression” to “recognisability of creative elements considered together”.
In the present case, this distinction was academic: the replica reproduced every significant design element of the Stratocaster in near-identical proportions and dimensions. Different branding and colour were held irrelevant.
Conclusion
The real challenge will emerge in future cases involving partial appropriation — where only some creative elements are taken over. In such scenarios, the traditional overall impression test and the new recognisability standard could diverge. The Düsseldorf ruling does not resolve this tension, but its synthetic approach — focusing on the interplay of incorporated creative elements rather than a holistic aesthetic comparison — offers a workable path forward.
The decision demonstrates that the Mio/konektra framework can be integrated within existing German doctrine without requiring a terminological break. For practitioners across Europe, it provides a valuable first data point on how national courts may adapt to the CJEU’s recalibrated standards for applied art.
Copyright Protection for the Fender Stratocaster: First Application of the CJEU Mio/konektra Principles to a Work of Applied Art in Germany
By Carolin Thurner, Attorney-at-Law at BARDEHLE PAGENBERG