Legal Issues
The state of Saxony-Anhalt has registered the disk as a trademark, which has resulted in two lawsuits. In 2003, Saxony-Anhalt successfully sued the city of Querfurt for depicting the disk design on souvenirs. Saxony-Anhalt also successfully sued the publishing houses Piper and Heyne over an abstracted depiction of the disk on book covers. The Magdeburg court assessed the case's relevance according to German copyright law. The defenders argued that as a cultic object, the disk had already been "published" in the Bronze Age, and that consequently all protection of intellectual property associated with it has long expired. The plaintiff on the other hand argued that the editio princeps of the disk is recent, and according to German law protected for 25 years, until 2027. Another argument concerned the question whether a notable work of art may be registered as a trademark in the first place.
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