CDSM Directive, Digital Single Market, European Union, France, Legislative process, Press Publishers ’ Right, Remuneration (equitable)

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Overview After fierce lobbying, European press publishers, backed by the French government, obtained the much criticized press publishers’ right (see e.g. here; here; and here) in Article 15 of Directive (EU) 2019/790 on copyright and related rights in the Digital Single Market (CDSM Directive). The objective of this new right is to allow the media…

CDSM Directive, Digital Single Market, European Union, France, Legislative process

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In a letter dated 29 March 2019, the President of the CSPLA (‘Conseil supérieur de la propriété littéraire et artistique’), an independent body in charge of advising the French Minister of Culture on copyright law, has appointed three public institutions to submit a report on the use of recognition tools for copyright-protected content on online…

Case Law, CJEU, France, Infringement, Software

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Following the Paris Court of Appeal judgment of 10 May 2016 (No 14/25055), the French courts have tended to consider that a licensee who breaches the terms of a software licence agreement does not commit copyright infringement, and that general contractual liability applies instead. In the aforementioned case, the Court dismissed the licensor’s (Oracle) claims…

Communication (right of), Enforcement, France, Infringement, Liability, Reproduction (right of)

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At the end of 2017, HADOPI published an important survey on its activities for the period 2016-2017. It gives interesting and useful information on the graduated response created by the French legislator to fight online infringement directly at the source, by educating internet users and dissuading them from unlawfully downloading and/or sharing (and if possible…

Case Law, Enforcement, France, Liability, Remedies

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The French Supreme Court held that the costs relating to the blocking measures ordered by the courts are strictly necessary for the preservation of the intellectual property rights and that the courts may order the internet service providers and search engine providers to bear such costs. Case date: 6 July 2017 Court: Court of Cassation of France,…

Case Law, France, Originality

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A full summary of this case has been published on Kluwer IP Law The Supreme Court held that even in cases where many photographs are involved, the courts must carry out a separate examination of each individual photograph in order to assess their respective originality, if necessary by grouping them by common characteristics. To make…

Case Law, France, Originality

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On 21 May 2015, the IP specialist chamber of the High Court of First Instance of Paris handed down one of its worst rulings in copyright law: in breach of the most basic EU and French copyright law rules, it refused copyright protection to a famous photograph of Jimi Hendrix (reproduced above), taken by Gered…

Case Law, France, Infringement, Liability

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A full report of this case has been published on Kluwer IP Law. The French Supreme Court upheld a judgment of the Court of Appeal of Paris that found an individual guilty of reproducing sculptures of Rodin, stating that the infringement of rights in a work that has fallen into the public domain consists of…

Case Law, CJEU, Collective management, European Union, France, Legislative process, Reproduction (right of)

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The French Act No. 2012-287 of 1 March 2012 ‘on the digital exploitation of unavailable books of the twentieth century’ created a specific compulsory collective management system for out-of-commerce books, in Articles L.134-1 to L.134-9 French intellectual property Code (‘IPC’). These new provisions were intended to allow the digitisation and reissuing of books that are…