Though a graphical user interface (GUI) cannot be protected under the EU's Software Directive it can be protected under the Information Society Directive, the EU's highest court ruled.
In the Czech Republic, Bezpečnostní softwarová asociace (BSA) applied to the Government for the right to act as the collective administrator for computer program copyrights, but was refused.
As part of the long legal dispute over the issue the ECJ was asked whether or not GUIs were protected by the Software Directive.
The Court said that they were not.
The Directive says that "protection in accordance with this Directive shall apply to the expression in any form of a computer program. Ideas and principles which underlie any element of a computer program, including those which underlie its interfaces, are not protected by copyright under this Directive".
"The graphic user interface is an interaction interface which enables communication between the computer program and the user," said the ruling. "In those circumstances, the graphic user interface does not enable the reproduction of that computer program, but merely constitutes one element of that program by means of which users make use of the features of that program."
"It follows that that interface does not constitute a form of expression of a computer program within the meaning of [the Directive] and that, consequently, it cannot be protected specifically by copyright in computer programs by virtue of that directive," said the ruling.
But the Court said that it has the discretion to give guidance even related to questions that were not asked by parties to the case.
"Even if the national court has limited its question to the interpretation of [the Software Directive], such a situation does not prevent the Court from providing the national court with all the elements of interpretation of European Union law which may enable it to rule on the case before it, whether or not reference is made thereto in the question referred," said the Court.
The ECJ said that it could consider whether a GUI could be protected under a directive on copyright in the information society. It said that it had, in previous cases, ruled that copyright would apply to anything which is "original in the sense that it is the author's own intellectual creation".
"Consequently, the graphic user interface can, as a work, be protected by copyright if it is its author’s own intellectual creation," said the ruling. "It is for the national court to ascertain whether that is the case in the dispute before it."
The national court should consider whether the components of the interface and their configuration are original and should not allow them to be protected by copyright if they are the way they are simply because of the function they perform.
"In such a situation, the components of a graphic user interface do not permit the author to express his creativity in an original manner and achieve a result which is an intellectual creation of that author," said the ruling.
