ECJ decision in the Călinescu case

The Hof van Justitie van de Europese Unie again emphasises (after Mio & Konektra) that the concept of a 'work' in copyright law is fully harmonised throughout the EU and that everywhere only two requirements apply (identifiable subject matter and an expression of free and creative choices). No higher threshold may be applied by any EU court.
On top, "it seems" to the ECJ that in this case, the required and sufficient free and creative choices have indeed been made, because of the authors efforts to "restore, by making corrections and additions, the text of the original work in a complete, comprehensible form that was as close as possible to the intention of its author" and by making "corrections, word replacements and additions which may be necessary to understand the manuscript of Dimitrie Cantemir’s work, and to the various language versions or variants of words or expressions which have been discarded". By doing so the "author seeks to restore a partially lost literary work in the form which he or she considers to be as close as possible to that drawn up by the author of the original work". That 'seems' to suffice, the ECJ says.

This means that when a work reflects the knowledge, understanding and experience of the author, this is a reflection of his or her personality (in the copyright sense of the word). This should come as no surprise, as the Berne Convention -to which the EU courts must look when interpreting the Copyright Directive- mentions as protected works (in art. 2) also "every production in the (...) scientific (...) domain". This means that the 'reflected personality' of the author can be just his or her knowledge, understanding and experience. There is no need for fanciful, aesthetic or remarkable choices (as some still try to argue, even after Mio & Konektra). Nor is there a need to show why exactly a certain choice has been made; it is sufficient that someone else, lacking this knowledge, understanding and experience, would likely have made different choices (or could not even have made such choices).
Adding to this that recognizably reproducing even a very small part of the publication (a sequence of 11 words could be enough, Infopaq teaches us), the protection granted by copyright is also broad. As was the whole idea behind the copyright directive; it repeatedly says it aims at providing a high level of protection.
Let's hope the EU courts hear the ECJ.