In the late fifteenth century, when the Italian Renaissance artist Leonardo da Vinci accomplished “Vitruvian Man” — certainly one of his most well-known drawings, which depicts the proportions of the human physique — he couldn’t have predicted it could be reproduced onto low cost notebooks, espresso mugs, T-shirts, aprons, and even puzzles.
Centuries later, the Italian authorities and the German puzzle maker Ravensburger are battling over who has the proper to breed “Vitruvian Man” and revenue from it.
At the middle of the dispute is Italy’s cultural heritage and panorama code, which was adopted in 2004 and permits cultural establishments, like museums, to request concession charges and funds for the business copy of cultural properties, like “Vitruvian Man.”
That code is at odds with European Union legislation, which states that works within the public area (like “Vitruvian Man”) aren’t topic to copyright.
For greater than a decade, Ravensburger bought a 1,000-piece puzzle with the picture of the famed drawing. But in 2019, the Italian authorities and the Gallerie dell’Accademia in Venice, the place the well-known work and different da Vinci items are on show, used the Italian code to demand Ravensburger cease promoting the puzzle and pay a licensing price.
Ravensburger refused, and later argued that the Italian code didn’t apply exterior of Italy.
In 2022, a Venice courtroom ordered the corporate to pay a penalty of 1,500 euros (or about $1,630) to the federal government and the Gallerie dell’Accademia for every day it delays cost.
But final month, the authorized battle took a flip when a courtroom in Germany sided with Ravensburger, ruling that the corporate doesn’t must pay up and that Italy’s cultural heritage code didn’t apply exterior its border. The courtroom stated the Italian code broke with European legislation that standardizes copyright protections for 70 years after the loss of life of the artist. (Da Vinci has been useless for 505 years.)
“The Italian state does not have the regulatory power to apply it outside Italian territory,” the German courtroom dominated. “The opposite view violates the sovereignty of the individual states and must therefore be rejected.”
But Italy has continued to push again. A spokesman for the Italian authorities instructed an Italian information outlet final week that the German ruling was “abnormal” and that the federal government would problem it earlier than “every national, international and community court.”
Italy’s Ministry of Culture didn’t reply to a number of requests for remark.
Heinrich Huentelmann, a spokesman for Ravensburger, stated in a press release on Tuesday that the corporate remained in touch with the concerned events and was endeavoring to resolve the battle.
Ravensburger stopped promoting the puzzle worldwide amid the authorized battle, Mr. Huentelmann stated, however a fast Google search revealed comparable puzzles made by different firms are nonetheless accessible on-line.
Eleonora Rosati, an Italian-qualified lawyer and professor of mental property legislation at Stockholm University, stated Italian officers have been making an attempt to concurrently safeguard the nation’s cultural heritage and monetize it.
Companies each inside and out of doors of Italy that use Italian tradition heritage items on merchandise might wish to function with warning, Ms. Rosati stated. She famous that in 2014 Italian officers famously went after an Illinois-based gun maker for utilizing a picture of Michelangelo’s statue of David to advertise a rifle.
“I don’t think that this German decision is the final word that has been spelled on this matter, and indeed all those using the images of Italian cultural heritage may want to assess the risk they are facing in doing that,” Ms. Rosati stated. “Right now, the situation has become quite heated.”
But Italy’s fervent method to defending culturally essential works might backfire, in response to Geraldine Johnson, a professor of artwork historical past on the University of Oxford.
“The result might be that legitimate companies that could be producing high-quality goods depicting iconic Italian works of art will turn instead to non-Italian objects,” Ms. Johnson stated, noting that such a shift may cut back that affect of Italian tradition globally whereas unlawful counterfeit items proceed to be made cheaply with pictures deemed illegal by the Italian courts.
“That would not seem to be in the best interests of increasing Italy’s global status and relevance through the ‘soft’ power of iconic visual imagery,” she stated.
