Die Kleine Münze im Urheberrecht

The author points by an empirical study of 118 german so called „small change“-cases, that court decisions on copyright protection of a product does not substantially depend on the already objectively hardly determinable level of originality, but in truth of its production effort - despite the fact that jurisdiction and literature emphasize that economic aspects in the decision should play no role. Using an economic-theoretical analysis, he states that the consideration of the production effort from a welfare point of view makes sense, leads to efficient and equitable results and should not be hidden any longer. Both from a legal and from an economic point of view should no longer be placed on the level of originality. He therefore proposes an improved definition of artwork that takes into account the production effort of the product rather than the level of originality.