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…
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…
From the Celestial Jukebox to AI. We have now reached the “Celestial Jukebox” predicted by Prof. Goldstein,[1] and have even gone well beyond with the rise of Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence. These key issues were at the heart of the annual IP conference organised by the University of Geneva on February 22, 2017 (programme…
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…
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…
2016 was a busy year for European copyright law. Unsurprisingly, Brexit and its potential impact on copyright in Europe and the UK was one of the most popular topics on the Kluwer Copyright Blog. Other hot topics included the much-anticipated CJEU judgment in the GS Media case and the ongoing EU copyright reform. We provide a countdown below…
A full report of this case has been published on Kluwer IP Law. Article L.113-3 paragraphs 1 and 2 of the French Intellectual Property Code (‘IPC’) provides that a work of collaboration shall be the joint property of its authors, and that joint authors shall exercise their rights by common consent. The decisions relating to…
A new French Law provides that search engines using thumbnails will have to pay royalties via a compulsory collective management for the reproduction of photographs and images. The French Act No. 2016-925 of 7 July 2016 on freedom of creation, architecture and cultural heritage contains several provisions on copyright that modify the intellectual property Code…
The Labour Chamber of the French Supreme Court has reaffirmed that under Article L.111-1 paragraph 3 of the French Intellectual Property Code (‘IPC’), a labour agreement entered into with the author of a work shall in no way derogate from the general rule, under which the author is the first creator. Therefore, in default of…
The Conseil d’Etat, the French administrative Supreme Court, ordered the French Prime Minister to take regulatory measures to indemnify the ISPs (Internet service providers) for the costs incurred when the HADOPI Commission requires them to provide information relating to internet users who have or are likely to have infringed copyright law. A full summary of…
