We are pleased to inform you of the Com­mer­cial Court’s decision.

The group call­ing itself ​‘HCU Hand­pan Com­mu­ni­ty Unit­ed’, led by Ralf Van den Bor, has just launched anoth­er fundrais­ing cam­paign. Under the title ​‘The Hand­pan may become ILLE­GAL’, they are stir­ring up fears that our claim to copy­right on the Hang threat­ens the free­dom ​‘of hun­dreds of mak­ers and musi­cians world­wide’. It also gives the impres­sion that a hand­pan must nec­es­sar­i­ly look exact­ly like the Hang, i.e. have a lens-shaped base, a cen­tral dome, a res­o­nance hole on the oppo­site side and cir­cu­lar­ly arranged tone fields.

These state­ments are false in three ways and are also misleading.

We were delight­ed to dis­cov­er a per­son play­ing Hang on the tail of SWIS­S’s first A350, which will soon be fly­ing from Toulouse to Bern!

In the year 2024, a branch of PANArt research has brought forth a new form and thus also a new way of play­ing: Pangolo.

To the Instrument

In March 2024, a film team led by Raphaël Engel from RTS (Radio Télévi­sion Suisse) vis­it­ed us and made a short film for the pro­gramme ​‘Passé-moi les jumelles’. The pro­gramme was broad­cast a year lat­er, in March 2025, and can now be viewed in the RTS media library. We would like to thank for the pleas­ant col­lab­o­ra­tion and the coher­ent insight into our atelier.

It is with great joy that we note the recent rejec­tion by the Swiss Fed­er­al Supreme Court of the appeal against the judg­ment of the Bernese High Court of Autumn 2024.

Music ther­a­pists Christo­pher Baron and Diet­mar Elsler have put their many years of expe­ri­ence and excit­ing ther­a­peu­tic approach­es with the Hang Balu on paper. It’s well worth a read. Read more here.

We are pleased to announce that on 4 Decem­ber 2024, PANArt received a new con­fir­ma­tion of copy­right on the hang from Col­mar, France. It applies not only to France, but also to Italy, Ger­many, the Nether­lands, Spain and Ire­land. In addi­tion, the rul­ing con­tains infor­ma­tion about which coun­ter­feits are like­ly to infringe the rights of authors Sabi­na Schär­er and Felix Rohner.

In the wake of the lat­est HCU-newslet­ter, we feel com­pelled to con­tribute a few clar­i­fy­ing sen­tences to the dis­cus­sion about the Bernese judge­ment, which impres­sive­ly con­firmed the copy­right pro­tec­tion of the Hang for Switzer­land, Ger­many and the Netherlands.

The Euro­pean Union Intel­lec­tu­al Prop­er­ty Office (EUIPO) has made its decision.

The Supreme Court of the Can­ton of Berne (Switzer­land), on July 2, 2024 hand­ed down the long await­ed deci­sion in the pro­ceed­ings ini­ti­at­ed by 25 man­u­fac­tur­ers and deal­ers of hand­pans (“Claimants”) in Octo­ber 2020. The Court, in its thor­ough deci­sion of 95 pages, held that the HANG, in all its ver­sions, and as shown in the sketch below, is pro­tect­ed by copy­right under Swiss law, under Ger­man law and under Dutch law.

Appli­ca­tion for can­cel­la­tion of the HANG brand: PANArt will thwart this attack.

The anniver­sary year has come to an end. The PANArt team delib­er­ate­ly refrained from cel­e­bra­tions and com­mem­o­ra­tive pub­li­ca­tions. The work in progress has tak­en its course and new sound objects have been cre­at­ed under the hands of our young sound sculptors.

The Com­mer­cial Court of the Can­ton of Bern had sched­uled the main hear­ing for two days, and it indeed last­ed that long – unusu­al­ly long for a court hear­ing in Switzer­land. The court­room was filled to capacity.

A Work in Progress

Since 1993, PANArt has been a place where sound objects are cre­at­ed.

In the begin­ning it was the Sweet Sound of Steel, that strong impulse from Trinidad and Toba­go, that drove the founders to pass it on in new mate­r­i­al, new sound and dif­fer­ent shape.

Balu is the com­pre­hen­sive term for a sound body con­sist­ing of the instru­ments Balu Sei, Balu Sai, Balu Sui and Godo. The video shows the PANArt tuners play­ing the instruments. 

Last May the plain­tiffs hand­ed their reply to the court. We now have respond­ed to this reply. This clos­es the writ­ten pro­ce­dure, and the com­mer­cial court of the Can­ton of Bern (Switzer­land) is expect­ed to sum­mon the par­ties to the main hear­ing in the begin­ning of 2023. Thus, we hope for a final deci­sion regard­ing the copy­right pro­tec­tion of the HANG in 2023.

A peace­ful fight
F. Rohn­er

We are in a fight:
For hon­esty,
Respect and jus­tice.

Shap­ing a body with a ham­mer,
To make the spir­it and soul resound,
Old images and norms are shat­tered,
A dif­fer­ent kind of music can be heard!

45 years on the road with a ham­mer
Felix Rohn­er, tuner, recounts.

(There are Eng­lish sub­ti­tles in the Youtube interface)

A Case Study on Man­ag­ing Cre­ativ­i­ty, Sep­tem­ber 2012

Author: Rupert Cocke
© Copy­right by the Author – All rights reserved
Pub­lished on www​.hang​blog​.org: Novem­ber 7^th, 2012Original lan­guage: English