Rubik's cube and Disney character stickers are not reproducible

Although for theRubik's cube - as ruled by the EU Court - the trademark cannot be registered, the famous six-sided puzzle cannot be reproduced anyway because it is covered by thecopyright. Red light also for thefaithful and unauthorised reproduction of stickers, from cellphone covers to gadgets, withWalt Disney characters. The Court of Cassation thus rejected a trader's appeal against a conviction for copyright infringement. The defence's argument, according to which there was no protection for the cube, did not pass. In support of freedom of reproduction, the defendant had cited the case law of the EU Court, which excluded the possibility of trademark registration. While for the Disney characters, while not excluding protection, the plaintiff asserted the absence of proof of their faithful reproduction and in any case requested non-punishment for the particular tenuousness of the act.

For the Supreme Court, however, both arguments are unfounded. The judges of legitimacy recall, in fact, that the coverage of law 633/1941 on copyright, protects "the authorship of the work of genius and the rights connected to its exercise, to which the right to its economic exploitation is linked, regardless of any formality linked to the trademark or patent". A wide-ranging guarantee: from T-shirts depicting cartoon characters to mobile phone cases illicitly reproducing printed images of cartoon characters destined for the cinema and television circuit. As for the Rubik's cube, the defence argument concerning the annulment of the trade mark (reaffirmed by the judgment of the EU General Court, Sixth Chamber, 9 July 2025, C-1170/23) is irrelevant, "because the acknowledged impossibility of registering the three-dimensional trade mark of the cube with the six faces of those specific colours does not exclude that, for the purposes of the contested offence, it is a work of authorship".

The same Court of Venice, specialised section for company matters, in an order dated 30 April 2025, granted protection of the cube as a work of industrial design during the precautionary phase. The judgment under appeal, therefore, is in line with the interpretation of the copyright law, because it reaffirmed that criminal protection is not conditional on the trade mark or patent, but on the intellectual work as the fruit of creative capacity. For the Disney stickers, having reached the proof of faithful reproduction, the possibility of applying Article 131-bis, which allows acquittal for particular tenuity of the fact, is excluded, given that the number of products was considerable: over 63 thousand.