In a statement made on 12 October 2023, the French collecting society Sacem, which represents most authors/composers and publishers of music in France, announced that it is opting out of machine learning training for the works in its repertoire. Sacem explains that it is basing its opt-out from generative AI systems on Article L122-5-3 of…

In a case between Google and the creator of the font used by the French newspaper Le Monde, the Paris Court of First Instance (‘Tribunal Judiciaire’) has handed down a judgment in which it ruled that the font created for the newspaper is original and thus protected by copyright, even though it found that Google’s…

Professor of Literary and Artistic Property Law at the Columbia Law School Jane C. Ginsburg recently visited London, where she delivered her lecture in memory of a well-known legal scholar – Professor William (Bill) Rodolph Cornish. Described as “an intellectual property pioneer and modern legal historian”, his untimely death in January 2022 was a blow…

Order no. 2021-580 of 12 May 2021 (‘transposition Order’) of the French Government implements articles 2(6) and 17 to 23 of the EU Directive 2019/790 on copyright and related rights in the Digital Single Market (‘CDSM’). In a ruling of 15 November 2022, the French administrative Supreme Court annulled the transposition Order to the extent that it does…

This contribution is based on a paper published in 44 European Intellectual Property Law Review 595 (2022)   Photographs are included in Article 2(1) of the Berne Convention as copyrightable artistic works. All Berne Union Member States must thus provide copyright protection to photographic works. As is known, originality has always been the essential requirement…

The Conseil d’Etat, the French administrative Supreme Court, handed down an important ruling on 15 November 2022 which annuls Order no. 2021-580 of 12 May 2021 (‘2021 Order’) of the French Government that implements articles 2(6) and 17 to 23 of the EU Directive 2019/790 on copyright and related rights in the Digital Single Market…

This post is the second instalment of an analysis of the ‘very short extracts’ (VSE) carve-out to the press publishers’ right set forth in Article 15 of the CDSM Directive. The first part examined the legal nature of the VSE rule, concluding that it ought to be qualified not as an ‘exception’, but as a…

Act no. 2021-1382 of 25 October 2021 on the regulation and protection of access to cultural works in the digital age has been published in the Official Journal. It modifies the French Intellectual Property Code (‘IPC’). The Act creates ‘ARCOM’ (the Authority for the regulation of audiovisual and digital communication), a new regulatory authority with…