Laureyssens v. Idea Group, Inc.
| Decision Date | 02 August 1991 |
| Docket Number | No. 91 Civ 27050 (RWS).,91 Civ 27050 (RWS). |
| Citation | 768 F. Supp. 1036 |
| Parties | Dirk LAUREYSSENS, an individual, I Love Love Company, N.V., Creative City Limited, and Extar Corporation, Plaintiffs, v. IDEA GROUP, INC. and Days Off Designs, Inc., Defendants. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Southern District of New York |
COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED
Darby & Darby, P.C. (Joseph B. Lerch, Alexandra D. Malatestinic, Robert Weisbein, Paul Fields, of counsel), New York City, for plaintiffs.
Amster, Rothstein & Ebenstein (Morton Amster, Marya Lenn Yee, Barbara Kolsun, Steven M. Levy, of counsel), New York City, for defendant Idea Group, Inc.
Plaintiffs Dirk Laureyssens ("Laureyssens"), I Love Love Company, N.V. ("ILLC"), Creative City Limited ("CCL) and Extar Corp. ("Extar") have moved for a preliminary injunction restraining defendant Idea Group, Inc. ("IGI") from distributing certain toys which the Plaintiffs assert infringe Laureyssens' copyrights and trade dress. For the following reasons, the motion is granted in part and denied in part.
Laureyssens is a designer of various puzzles and toys including the puzzles which give rise to this dispute (the "Laureyssens Puzzles"). In the United States, the Laureyssens Puzzles have been sold under several names, most recently under the name "HAPPY CUBE."
ILLC is a Belgian corporation with its principal place of business in Belgium. ILLC manufactures the Laureyssens Puzzles in Europe and distributes them to certain European countries. ILLC has exported Laureyssens Puzzles for sale in the United States.
CCL is Laureyssens' worldwide representative for licensing the copyrights for the Laureyssens Puzzles.
Extar is a California corporation headquartered in Los Angeles. Extar's Chief Executive Officer is Raphael Berkien ("Berkien"). Extar is the "exclusive United States distributor" of the Laureyssens Puzzles.
IGI is a California corporation with principal offices in Palm Desert, California. IGI was formed to develop and market consumer products including the puzzles at issue in this lawsuit (the "SNAFOOZ Puzzles"), and has been investigating the possibility of marketing various other products.
IGI and Robert D. Stevens ("Stevens") its Executive Vice President.
The Plaintiffs' motion was filed on June 5, 1991. Testimony was heard on July 1 and 2, and the matter was argued and fully submitted on July 10.
At issue in this lawsuit are a series of foam rubber puzzles. The puzzles produced by both parties are described as "flat to cube" puzzles, meaning that their six pieces can be assembled in a flat form in a rectangular frame, and can also be assembled into a three-dimensional hollow cube. The cube is formed by joining the six pieces, the cube faces, with each piece being connected to its four neighbors at right angles.
The pieces are joined together by means of "notches" cut into the edges and "fingers," the parts of the edge left when the notches are cut out. The fingers fit into the notches and the friction between the two holds the pieces together in the cube form.
The notches and fingers are all cut at right angles to the piece edge and perpendicular to the face of the piece, so that the fingers can interlock with notches in both a planar arrangement, with both pieces lying flat on one surface, and in the perpendicular arrangement necessary to form a cube.1 For ease of reference, this system of connecting pieces in flat and cube form through the use of right-angled notches and fingers in the piece edges will be referred to as "rectilinear interconnections."
Obviously, in order to connect two pieces in either the flat or cube form, the notches on the edge of the first piece must match up with fingers on the adjoining edge of the second piece. The fundamental challenge of the puzzle is to select the proper pieces to join together and to join them in the correct orientation. While this may appear to be a simple or trivial task, in fact the puzzles, particularly the multi-puzzle combinations described in more detail below, are quite challenging.
The complexity of the puzzles is to a certain extent dictated by the number of notches and fingers on each edge. In order to join two pieces smoothly in the perpendicular alignment, the depth of the notches — and, correspondingly, the length of the fingers — must be equal to the thickness of the material of which the puzzle is made. Assuming that a single notch or finger is square,2 as is the case in both parties' puzzles, the length of each edge of the cube can be measured in "notchwidths" or "units," one unit being equal to the thickness of the puzzle material. The Laureyssens Puzzles are all based on a cube which has five units per edge, while IGI's puzzles form cubes which are six units in length.3
Laureyssens first began working with cube puzzles in 1985, when he attempted to design a cube which could be assembled from six identically shaped pieces. After some experimentation, he realized that this was not possible, but he did produce a cube formed from five identical pieces and one piece which was only slightly different.
Thereafter, Laureyssens began designing cube puzzles in which the pieces could also be fitted together in flat form in a two piece by three piece matrix. Of course, because of the fingers and notches on the pieces, this flat arrangement did not form a smooth rectangle, but by placing it inside an appropriately cut frame, Laureyssens created a puzzle which could be assembled into both a perfect cube and a flat rectangle.
In fact, he designed a series of such puzzles, six of which are the source of this lawsuit (the "Laureyssens Puzzles"). Each was designed by Laureyssens to have a different level of difficulty, and he chose the pieces for the six puzzles so that not only could each individual puzzle be assembled in flat and cube form, but pieces from different puzzles could be assembled to create new cubes and other three-dimensional figures, including a "beam" of two or three cubes joined in a line, a double sized cube, with each side comprised of four pieces, a "cross" of five cubes, and a "star" of six cubes. In selecting the pieces for his puzzles, Laureyssens testified that he was trying not only to satisfy all of the foregoing criteria, but also to select pieces which had "balance," or were aesthetically pleasing to his senses. In fact, he testified that he rejected a number of pieces because he did not like their appearance.
The first commercial puzzles which Laureyssens produced consisted of a set of three of what would eventually be his six puzzles. All three were initially manufactured in white foam. Subsequently these puzzles were colored yellow, green, and blue, corresponding to the puzzles presently marketed in those colors. Laureyssens later added orange, red and purple puzzles to his line.
Of the thirty-six puzzles pieces which make up the series of six Laureyssens Puzzles, there are thirty-four distinct piece shapes: two shapes are repeated, one in the red and blue puzzles, and one in the orange and purple.
The six Laureyssens Puzzles are also identified by the names of various cities: the yellow is called "Tokio", the orange is "Amsterdam," green "New York," blue "Milano," purple "Brussels" and red "Paris." Since he first began marketing these puzzles, Laureyssens has sold them under the names I-QUBE, COCOCRASH, CUBE-IT and HAPPY CUBE.
In the first phase of designing his puzzles, Laureyssens created about forty distinct puzzle pieces. He initially sought intellectual property protection for his designs by registering them in 1986 with the World Intellectual Property Organization ("WIPO"), an international organization headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland. Although there were more than one hundred pieces depicted in this registration, there are at least some pieces in the Laureyssens Puzzles which were not registered.4
Laureyssens first sought United States copyright protection in 1987, when he personally visited the Copyright Office in Washington and prepared his own certificate of copyright registration, Certificate Number TXU 271 722 (the "722 Certificate"). This certificate contained the following entry:
The material which accompanied this registration certificate has not been produced by the Plaintiffs, although Laureyssens testified that he submitted as part of the application a white foam rubber version of the puzzle which is now the yellow Laureyssens Puzzle.
In June 1988, Laureyssens sought to supplement his earlier registration, filing two new certificates, numbered TX 2 332 524 (the "524 Certificate") and TX 2 332 525 (the "525 Certificate"). Both certificates reported the "Nature of Authorship" as "SCULPTURE, TEXT, ARTWORK, PHOTOGRAPHES sic, & SAMPLES ADDED TO THE WORK." Laureyssens identified the 722 Certificate as a previous registration for the works covered by both the 524 and 525 Certificates.
Under the category of "DERIVATIVE WORK OR COMPILATION," the 524 Certificate contained the following entry:
Attached to the 524 Certificate are twenty-four pages of written material which include diagrams describing how to assemble 120 different cubes as well as twenty-eight more complex puzzles, and several diagrams showing how some of...
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