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Within the late fifteenth century, when the Italian Renaissance artist Leonardo da Vinci accomplished “Vitruvian Man” — one in every of his most well-known drawings, which depicts the proportions of the human physique — he couldn’t have predicted it will 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 appropriate to breed “Vitruvian Man” and revenue from it.
On the heart 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 replica of cultural properties, like “Vitruvian Man.”
That code is at odds with European Union regulation, which states that works within the public area (like “Vitruvian Man”) usually are not topic to copyright.
For greater than a decade, Ravensburger bought a 1,000-piece puzzle with the picture of the famed drawing. However 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 payment.
Ravensburger refused, and later argued that the Italian code didn’t apply outdoors 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 fee.
However 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 outdoors its border. The courtroom mentioned the Italian code broke with European regulation that standardizes copyright protections for 70 years after the dying of the artist. (Da Vinci has been lifeless for 505 years.)
“The Italian state doesn’t have the regulatory energy to use it outdoors Italian territory,” the German courtroom dominated. “The other view violates the sovereignty of the person states and should due to this fact be rejected.”
However Italy has continued to push again. A spokesman for the Italian authorities instructed an Italian information outlet final week that the German ruling was “irregular” and that the federal government would problem it earlier than “each nationwide, worldwide and neighborhood courtroom.”
Italy’s Ministry of Tradition didn’t reply to a number of requests for remark.
Heinrich Huentelmann, a spokesman for Ravensburger, mentioned in an announcement on Tuesday that the corporate remained involved with the concerned events and was endeavoring to resolve the battle.
Ravensburger stopped promoting the puzzle worldwide amid the authorized battle, Mr. Huentelmann mentioned, however a fast Google search revealed related puzzles made by different corporations are nonetheless obtainable on-line.
Eleonora Rosati, an Italian-qualified lawyer and professor of mental property regulation at Stockholm College, mentioned Italian officers have been making an attempt to concurrently safeguard the nation’s cultural heritage and monetize it.
Corporations each inside and outdoors of Italy that use Italian tradition heritage items on merchandise could need to function with warning, Ms. Rosati mentioned. 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 suppose that this German determination is the ultimate phrase that has been spelled on this matter, and certainly all these utilizing the pictures of Italian cultural heritage could need to assess the danger they’re dealing with in doing that,” Ms. Rosati mentioned. “Proper now, the scenario has grow to be fairly heated.”
However Italy’s fervent strategy to defending culturally essential works might backfire, in response to Geraldine Johnson, a professor of artwork historical past on the College of Oxford.
“The outcome may be that legit corporations that could possibly be producing high-quality items depicting iconic Italian artworks will flip as an alternative to non-Italian objects,” Ms. Johnson mentioned, noting that such a shift would possibly 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 will not appear to be in the very best pursuits of accelerating Italy’s international standing and relevance via the ‘smooth’ energy of iconic visible imagery,” she mentioned.
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