Statement regarding the HCU newsletter from October 2024

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.

As the newsletter mentions, not all plaintiffs have taken the matter to the Federal Supreme Court. We repeatedly extended our hand and made offers that would have enabled each plaintiff to continue to exist economically and to sell their own sound sculptures. Even though not many took our hand, we are still pleased to have settled the dispute in some places.

The Federal Supreme Court's decision on the scope of protection of a grill ring is not relevant to the scope of protection of the HANG simply because they are obviously completely different objects. The passage cited by the HCU in the Federal Supreme Court's ruling is also explicitly limited to the object examined by the federal judges (‘in the present case... the hurdle here is... high’).

The HCU newsletter states that ‘most handpans that do not really look like a hang’ would fall outside the scope of copyright protection of the Hang – and therefore not infringe it. In contrast, the Bernese judges have ruled that the HANG, in particular according to the following sketch, is protected by copyright:

From our point of view, all of the plaintiffs‘ designs look like this sketch. We are therefore confident that the Bern Commercial Court will come to the conclusion in the second phase of the proceedings that the plaintiffs’ products infringe our copyright on the HANG.

Finally, the HCU has raised allegations regarding an e-mail in which we informed handpan distributors and makers in Europe about the Bern ruling. We are pleased that the Bernese judges have recognized our work,and we see it as our right to inform people about this copyright recognition. We did this objectively and attached the full text of the ruling so that each recipient can form their own opinion.