Dear Handpan Community,  

Yesterday, we received the judgement from the Berne Court. 

We published the judgement online:
Original German version
English translation 

The judgment is extensive and has not yet been fully analysed by us or our lawyers. More time is needed for that. 

The Court assessed infringement on an instrument-by-instrument basis. It did not give general, high-level guidelines on what is required for an instrument to not infringe. The court merely decided which of the individual instruments that we submitted to the Court (6 years ago) are infringing, and which ones are not. 

However, our first general impression is as follows:

• A standard layout on top seems to require several notes on the bottom, including at least one prominent note with a dome, to be considered out of the scope of protection (meaning, they are not infringing on the copyright of the Hang).
• All instruments without a dome on the top shell seem to be out of the scope of protection (e.g., inpex or no bass note).
• “Mutants” with an off-centred dome seem to be out of the scope of protection, as long as they have bottom notes.
• “Medusa” layouts seem to be out of the scope of protection. 

For your reference, we have included an overview of handpan designs that were considered to be non-infringing. Find it here.


Next steps:

There are several scenarios possible:

• All parties have the possibility to appeal the decision, which will take the proceedings to the Swiss Federal Supreme Court. In such a case, we would still have the possibility to appeal the first partial decision concerning the copyright protection of the Hang in general. PANArt can appeal against the decision on non-infringing designs. The appeal deadline is by the end of August 2026. 
• All parties can accept the judgement and by that, the decision of the Berne Court will be binding (only between the parties). 

To be continued.