Applied art refers to designs that combine artistic expression with utilitarian function, and it falls within a gray area between copyright law and design law because it simultaneously incorporates functional and aesthetic elements. In the current environment, with the global dissemination of product designs, questions concerning copyright protection of applied art and the coexistence of copyright and design rights have become significant legal issues. In particular, legislative approaches and judicial decisions across jurisdictions reveal divergent criteria for determining the copyrightability of applied art. The judgment of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in Mio/Konektra, delivered on December 4, 2025, reaffirmed the EU’s established case law that originality constitutes the sole criterion for assessing the copyrightability of applied art. This ruling has renewed scholarly and practical debates concerning the scope of copyright protection for applied art. Moreover, cases decided in the same year by German and Dutch courts—which reached conflicting conclusions with respect to the same applied art object—demonstrate that uncertainty persists within the EU regarding the application of this standard. Taking the Mio/Konektra judgment as its point of departure, this article undertakes a comparative analysis of the legal principles governing copyright protection for applied art in the European Union, the United States, Japan, and Korea. It identifies and contrasts the normative models adopted in each jurisdiction: the EU’s originality-based single-criterion approach; the separability-focused frameworks of the United States and Korea; and Japan’s requirement of a high degree of aesthetic creativity. Based on this comparative analysis, the paper further examines the current position of and challenges facing Korea’s applied art copyright protection system.