“New Methods” of Protecting Cultural Heritage

Nowadays, apart from the typical methods of cultural heritage preservation, such as national legislation concerning monuments protection, e.g. the Polish Act of 23 July 2003 on the protection and care of monuments [ Journal of Law – Dz.U. 2021, item 710 as amended, hereinafter: the Act of 2003] or the French Act of 1930 on the protection of natural monuments and sites of artistic, historical, legendary and scientific interest [hereinafter: French Act of 1930], new elements of monument protection appear. Among these “new methods” we can highlight trademark protection as a way of preserving monuments, which is what I’ll be focusing on in this paper.

Of course, these “new methods” mostly do not protect monuments directly, but one can easily notice that they can be used for this purpose indirectly – they do not protect monuments or cultural heritage in general, however in some particular cases, used in a very specific way they do. Such an observation was made by the Court of Justice of the European Union in ruling C-720/18 and C-721/18 Ferrari SpA, concerning two trademarks carried by objects that could be considered monuments.

The search for new methods of cultural heritage protection should be viewed positively, since the more methods of protection there are, the more effective it is. The usage of legal institutions that are not normally used for the protection of monuments or cultural heritage clearly indicates that indirect protection is possible. In my opinion, such indirect methods of protection should be sought because they offer the greatest opportunities.

Joined Cases C-720/18 and C-721/18

The cases that I will be referring to concern Ferrari Testarossa trademark and were dealt with by the Court of Justice of the European Union in the context of a procedure for a preliminary ruling with a question asked by a Member State of the European Union. Their relevance is clearly outlined in the context of cultural heritage protection. It is also worth emphasizing that the ruling bears the mark of universality, which means that its content may be repeatedly reapplied in similar cases, which additionally increases its significance in terms of monument protection.