Tripp Trapp: The child’s chair sitting at the limits of copyright protection in the EU

The Tripp Trapp highchair by Norwegian furniture manufacturer Stokke A/S has been the subject of numerous copyright cases in the EU and beyond. On 30 June 2025, the District Court of Gelderland in the Netherlands issued yet another decision in a legal case that revolved around the question of whether the chair enjoyed copyright protection, as Volha Parfenchyk explains.   

On 12 March 2025, Cybex, a manufacturer of child safety products, launched its IRIS chair in the European market. A few days later, two Dutch major suppliers of baby and child products, Babypark BV and Baby-Dump BV (two daughter companies of FTH Groep BV), offered the IRIS chair in their respective e-commerce stores. In response, Stokke initiated preliminary injunction proceedings against the defendants before the District Court of Gelderland, claiming that the IRIS chair infringed the copyright of the Tripp Trapp chair, and requesting a pan-European injunction to be granted. The defendants claimed, inter alia, that they did not infringe Stokke's copyright because the Tripp Trapp chair did not meet the threshold for copyright protection in the EU.  

Tripp Trapp and the limits of copyright protection 

In its 30 June 2025 ruling, the District Court of Gelderland refuted the arguments of the defendants, confirming that the Tripp Trapp chair enjoyed copyright protection.  

• Copyright protection 

As a preliminary remark, the court noted that the issue of copyright protection of utility objects (such as chairs) is the subject of current legal debate; in particular, in the joined cases of Mio/konektra. As these copyright cases were still pending before the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU) at the time of the Tripp Trapp ruling, the case was decided in light of the existing CJEU and Supreme Court case law. 

According to that established case law, the Stokke chair meets the criteria for copyright protection if it:  

• Relates to an original subject matter that is the author's own intellectual creation, 
• Contains elements that are the expression of such an intellectual creation, which can therefore be considered a "work”.  
• Reflects the personality of its author and is expressed through the author's free creative choices in its creation.  

According to the court, the Stokke chair meets these criteria. In particular, two elements of the chair are original, namely: (i) the L-shape of the uprights and beams and (ii) the slanted uprights in which all the elements of the chair are incorporated. 

• Copyright infringement 

The court then proceeded to analyse whether Cybex infringed on Stokke's copyright. Here, it first commented on the Opinion issued by Advocate General Szpunar (in the joined copyright cases Mio/konektra), which recommended looking at whether creative elements of the protected work have been recognisably incorporated into the allegedly infringing subject matter when assessing whether copyright infringement has taken place.  

This test is different from that used as part of the current legal practice (namely, the overall impression test), and the court felt it would be premature to employ it, given that it has not yet been established in case law. Instead, the assessment of this dispute must be based on the overall impression criterion, as per the current legal practice.  

Did the IRIS chair create a similar overall impression to the Tripp Trapp chair? The court answered this question in the affirmative, thereby confirming the infringement of Stokke’s copyright by the defendants. How did it reach its conclusion? First, according to the court, the IRIS chair incorporates the two most important, and moreover, copyright-protected, elements of the Tripp Trapp chair: the IRIS chair contains uprights that incorporate all the chair's elements, and these uprights also have a slanted L-shape.  

Second, these two elements distinguish the Tripp Trapp chair from other highchairs. These are the elements that made it famous throughout the world. Hence, the copyrighted features of the Tripp Trapp chair have been adopted in the IRIS chair to such an extent that the overall impressions between the Tripp Trapp chair and the IRIS chair should be deemed to be similar. 

• Request for a pan-European injunction 

Finally, the court addressed the request for a pan-European injunction. It recalled that the question of whether a work enjoys copyright protection should be answered uniformly in the entire EU, even though caution should be applied when it comes specifically to works of applied art. The court found that in 17 EU member states where Cybex was actively selling the IRIS chair, the injunction could be granted.  

Key takeaways about copyright protection in the EU 

This ruling is particularly remarkable due to the granting of the pan-European injunction. As we have previously covered, different EU member states hold differing opinions on the copyright protection of applied art, despite multiple attempts to harmonise European copyright law. It is possible that this decision is simply a consequence of the acknowledgement of the chair’s world fame and agreement (at least among Dutch judges) of its meeting the standards of copyright protection.  

Would such an injunction be granted for a product that does not undoubtedly meet these standards? It is hard to say. The history of the harmonisation of the EU copyright is yet to be written.  

To find out more about establishing and enforcing copyright protection in the EU, speak to your Novagraaf consultant or contact us below.  

Volha Parfenchyk works in Novagraaf’s Knowledge Management department. She is based in Amsterdam.