trash cancreators Herman Koch and Michiel Romeyn are considering going to the Supreme Court after the Amsterdam Court of Appeal’s ruling on the controversial Trash Encyclopedia† The sticker with the text ‘unauthorized’ must be removed from the book about the TV program published last year, the judge ruled Tuesday.
trash can-lawyer Onno Hennis says that the team is “stunned” by the ruling. Koch and Romeyn believe that the judgment is insufficiently substantiated and that the court “wrongly” ignored a number of points.
“Jiskefet has not only pursued this case for itself, but also to make a point of principle for other artists and performers who are confronted with commercial parties that piggyback on the fame and marketability of their work,” says Hennis.
Koch and Romeyn went to court in October last year because they wanted access to the trash can-encyclopedia of publishing house Noblesse. The book had been written without their knowledge.
The judge granted them that access, after which the men again went to court. This time they wanted it to be clear to buyers that they had nothing to do with the creation of the book and they invoked the trademark right.
The judge ruled in favor of Romeyn and Koch and ruled that the publisher should provide all books with a sticker that reads ‘unauthorized’.
Publisher received support from Press Freedom Fund
Noblesse appealed. The company’s lawyer said it should remain possible to publish an unauthorized book about a phenomenon such as trash can.
The Press Freedom Fund, founded by the journalists’ union NVJ and the Association of Editors in Chief, supported the publishing house and helped pay for the appeal. They found that the judge did not take sufficient account of journalistic interests in the ruling. Noblesse won the appeal on Tuesday.
“With the ruling, the door is open for all kinds of subtle forms of freeriding,” says the lawyer of trash can† Lawyer Brigitte Spiegeler of Noblesse Publishers is on the one hand happy with the ruling, but calls it “sad” that the publisher “sold far fewer books than hoped” because of the case.
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