What do cheerleading uniforms and laminated faux-maple flooring have in common? And what does either one have to do with copyright law? Read on: Both have recently been the subject of dubious rulings about the copyrightability of useful articles that could, if not reversed, further muddy the already murky doctrinal waters the courts have created around this issue. This column will discuss Varsity Brands, Inc. v. Star Athletica1and Home Legend v. Mannington Mills,2 and will suggest that they misconstrued what the Copyright Act means when it refers to the “utilitarian aspects” of a useful article. Under settled copyright principles, both the cheerleader uniforms in Varsity Brands and the laminated flooring in Home Legend certainly qualify as useful articles, but in analyzing the copyrightability of their decorative elements, these decisions fail to follow basic principles enunciated by the U.S. Supreme Court in the seminal case of Mazer v. Stein.3
From ‘Mazer’ to Copyright Act
The foundation of current law concerning copyright for useful articles is the 1954 Supreme Court decision in Mazer v. Stein. The work in Mazer was a lamp, the base of which incorporated a sculptural figure of a Balinese dancer. The court concluded that the sculptural figure was copyrightable under §5(g) or §5(h) of the Copyright Act of 1909, 17 U.S.C. 1 et seq. (1909), as a “work of art” even though it was part of a useful object which fell outside the scope of copyright law.
