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.

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 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.

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.

What is the issue?
An attempt­ed expla­na­tion.

By Felix Rohn­er, PANArt

The enor­mous eco­nom­ic impor­tance of intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty for our soci­ety and the need for effi­cient legal pro­tec­tion of inno­va­tions and invest­ments in tech­nol­o­gy and cul­ture are now recognized.