Interpretations
The concept of a collective work (œuvre collective) in French law is complicated and unclear, and case law and scholarly views do not always agree. Bernard Edelman, in his l’œuvre collective : une définition introuvable (1998), describes the legal definition of collective works as "obscure and tangled". However, all authorities agree that the concept of an oeuvre collective in France covers dictionaries, encyclopaedias and periodical works such as newspapers or magazines. Courts have also ruled that collective works may include such things as the elements of a car body, a computer program, a poster and a guide of administrative formalities.
Basic conditions for a collective work are that there must be a promoter, presenter or orchestrator, and the work must not be joint authorship. The work's maître, a natural or legal person, directs creation of the collective work, harmonizes the contributions, edits, publishes and discloses the work. The maître decides on the theme, treatment and spirit of the work, assembles the contributions, harmonizes it and publishes the overall work. The contributors have not significantly cooperated in creating the overall work, but have each worked independently under the direction of the maître. It does not matter whether the contributors are identified or remain anonymous.
In a 1999 dispute over the rights of the daily newspaper Le Progrès to publish articles online, the lower court refused to designate Le Progrès a collective work, but the Court of Appeal ruled that it was a collective work by virtue of assembling a newspaper in several editions, selecting and presenting the contributions at the sole discretion of the owner, Groupe Progrès. By working under the direction of the owner, the contributors lose their creative independence, however important their contributions are to the collective work.
Moral rights
Moral rights are seen as personality rights in French law, attached to the personality of the author and inalienable. They are retained by the author even when the patrimonial rights are sold. The Intellectual Property Code says the maître has the author's rights, and does not distinguish between moral and economic rights. However, only a natural person can be an author, and moral rights cannot be alienated from the author, giving rise to uncertainty over whether the maître could claim any moral rights in the collective work. [11] However, in a 22 March 2012 decision the French Supreme Court (Cour de cassation) reversed the decision of a lower court and stated that "the natural or legal person at the initiative of a collective work is vested with the author's rights over this work and, in particular, the moral rights prerogatives". The owner of the collective work may not be a natural person, so they are not an author in the strict sense, but they own the moral rights as well as the economic rights, and may therefore prohibit violations of their moral rights such as distortion of the collective work.
Each contributor to the collective work retains the moral rights to their contribution, and may enforce this right against third parties or against the maître if they make unauthorized changes to the contribution. Despite this, the maître may modify the contributions as far as is needed to harmonize them with the collective work as a whole. The moral right of the contributor is limited by the fusion of their contribution with those of the other co-authors.
Electronic reproduction
The rise of the Internet has opened new questions about the rights of the authors of contributions to a collective work. When a newspaper is reproduced in its entirety the reproduction falls under the collective work regime. Publication in successive editions of a newspaper during the course of the day, each of which reproduces a large part of the previous edition, is not seen as publication in another newspaper. Electronic publication of the entire newspaper could therefore be seen as an edition of the same collective work. However, partial or selective reproduction may require the agreement of the contributors.
As an example of digital reproduction of the full work, since 2005 the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF) has been digitizing editions of daily and weekly periodicals that were published before 1943. Some of this has been through agreements with the publishers L’Ouest-Éclair and Le Monde diplomatique . Where the BnF does not have such an agreement, the BnF considers the newspaper to be a collective work that entered the public domain 70 years after publication. Some of these digitized journals may contain contributions for which the individual author's rights have not expired. Thus the cover of the digitized La Baïonnette of 2 December 1915 has an illustration by the artist Albert Jarach, who died in 1962 and whose rights would not expire until 2033.
France was the first country to introduce an online newspaper, with the Minitel service in the 1980s. Today the online and print versions of newspaper are typically run by different departments and have different appearance, with the online versions updated frequently and providing video boxes and interactive features. Some newspapers are online only. A case between the French national union of journalists and Le Figaro newspaper was heard on 14 April 1999 by the Court of First Instance in Paris. Le Figaro had created a website where articles by the journalists could be consulted online. The court ruled that although the printed newspaper was a collective work, the rights of the journalists concerning their articles had been infringed. Le Figaro only had the right to publish the articles in the printed newspaper, and the website would be considered another newspaper or magazine.
On 9 December 1999 the Lyon Court of Appeal ruled similarly that the daily newspaper Le Progrès was guilty of forgery for having published its journalists' articles on the internet. Although the newspaper was a collective work, the right of the owner to reproduction was limited to the paper edition, and the website could not be seen as an extension of that edition. A similar judgement was issued by the Court of Cassation on 3 July 2013 in a case concerning the newspaper L'Union. The court said that whether or not that newspaper was a collective work, which had not been proven, the consent of a contributor was required before his contributions could be reproduced on an Internet site and reproduced in another newspaper.
Newspapers have responded by signing agreements with journalist's unions that took different approaches to cover online publication of articles. Les Derniéres Nouvelles d'Alsace paid journalists for online use. Le Monde compensated journalists for ceding their copyright. Les Échos made an agreement that treated the print and online versions as one.
A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, educational, or musical form. Copyright is intended to protect the original expression of an idea in the form of a creative work, but not the idea itself. A copyright is subject to limitations based on public interest considerations, such as the fair use doctrine in the United States.
A work made for hire, in copyright law in the United States, is a work that is subject to copyright and is created by employees as part of their job or some limited types of works for which all parties agree in writing to the WFH designation. Work for hire is a statutorily defined term and so a work for hire is not created merely because parties to an agreement state that the work is a work for hire. It is an exception to the general rule that the person who actually creates a work is the legally-recognized author of that work. In the United States and certain other copyright jurisdictions, if a work is "made for hire," the employer, not the employee, is considered the legal author. In some countries, this is known as corporate authorship. The entity serving as an employer may be a corporation or other legal entity, an organization, or an individual.
Moral rights are rights of creators of copyrighted works generally recognized in civil law jurisdictions and, to a lesser extent, in some common law jurisdictions.
The copyright law of Canada governs the legally enforceable rights to creative and artistic works under the laws of Canada. Canada passed its first colonial copyright statute in 1832 but was subject to imperial copyright law established by Britain until 1921. Current copyright law was established by the Copyright Act of Canada which was first passed in 1921 and substantially amended in 1988, 1997, and 2012. All powers to legislate copyright law are in the jurisdiction of the Parliament of Canada by virtue of section 91(23) of the Constitution Act, 1867.
A copyright is the legal protection extended to the owner of the rights in an original work. Original work refers to every production in the literary, scientific, and artistic domains. The Intellectual Property Office (IPOPHL) is the leading agency responsible for handling the registration and conflict resolution of intellectual property rights and to enforce the copyright laws. IPOPHL was created by virtue of Republic Act No. 8293 or the Intellectual Property Code of the Philippines which took effect on January 1, 1998, under the presidency of Fidel V. Ramos.
The droit d'auteur developed in the 18th century at the same time as copyright developed in the United Kingdom. Based on the "right of the author" instead of on "copyright", its philosophy and terminology are different from those used in copyright law in common law jurisdictions. It has been very influential in the development of copyright laws in other civil law jurisdictions, and in the development of international copyright law such as the Berne Convention.
The Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, also known as the CDPA, is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that received royal assent on 15 November 1988. It reformulates almost completely the statutory basis of copyright law in the United Kingdom, which had, until then, been governed by the Copyright Act 1956 (c. 74). It also creates an unregistered design right, and contains a number of modifications to the law of the United Kingdom on Registered Designs and patents.
Spanish copyright law governs copyright, that is the rights of authors of literary, artistic or scientific works, in Spain. It was first instituted by the Law of 10 January 1879, and, in its origins, was influenced by French copyright law and by the movement led by Victor Hugo for the international protection of literary and artistic works. As of 2006, the principal dispositions are contained in Book One of the Intellectual Property Law of 11 November 1987 as modified. A consolidated version of this law was approved by Royal Legislative Decree 1/1996 of 12 April 1996: unless otherwise stated, all references are to this law.
"Author's rights" is a term frequently used in connection with laws about intellectual property.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to intellectual property:
Japanese copyright laws consist of two parts: "Author's Rights" and "Neighbouring Rights". As such, "copyright" is a convenient collective term rather than a single concept in Japan. Japan was a party to the original Berne convention in 1899, so its copyright law is in sync with most international regulations. The 1899 law protected copyrighted works for 30 years after the author's death. Law changes promulgated in 1970 extended the duration to 50 years. However, in 2004 Japan further extended the copyright term to 70 years for cinematographic works. At the end of 2018, as a result of the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations and a requirement stemming from the EU–Japan Economic Partnership Agreement., the 70 year term was applied to all works. This new term was not applied retroactively; works that had entered the public domain between 1999 and 29 December 2018 (inclusive) due to expiration remained in the public domain.
The copyright law of Australia defines the legally enforceable rights of creators of creative and artistic works under Australian law. The scope of copyright in Australia is defined in the Copyright Act 1968, which applies the national law throughout Australia. Designs may be covered by the Copyright Act as well as by the Design Act. Since 2007, performers have moral rights in recordings of their work.
Authorship and ownership in copyright law in Canada is an important and complex topic which lies at the nexus between Canada's Copyright Act, an important body of case law, and a number of compelling policy motives. Analysis of authorship and ownership of copyrightable works in Canada can proceed by examination of the rules determining the initial allocation of copyrights, rules governing subsequent changes in ownership, and finally rules governing complex works such as compilations.
Société Plon et autres v. Pierre Hugo et autres, 04–15.543 Arrêt n° 125 is a decision by the First Civil Chamber of the Cour de Cassation which ruled that François Cérésa's adaptations/sequels of Les Misérables do not per se violate the droit moral of its author Victor Hugo and his estate. Droit moral originated in France, this case serves to limit the scope of that right and expand the public domain in French copyright law.
A collective work is a work that contains the works of several authors assembled and published under the direction of one natural or legal person who owns the copyright in the work as a whole. Definitions vary considerably from one country to another, but usually treat ownership of the work as a whole as distinct from ownership of the individual contributions, so the individual authors may retain the right to publish their work elsewhere. It is common for publication of articles on the Internet, when isolated from the context of the overall work, to be considered to be outside of the standard agreement between the author and the owner of the collective work.
The basic legal instrument governing copyright law in Georgia is the Law on Copyright and Neighboring Rights of June 22, 1999 replacing Art. 488–528 of the Georgian Civil Code of 1964. While the old law had followed the Soviet Fundamentals of 1961, the new law is largely influenced by the copyright law of the European Union.
Copyright law in Syria is regulated by the Copyright and Neighbouring Rights Law issued by Legislative Decree No. 62 of 2013. The Syrian Ministry of Culture, through its Copyright Office, is generally in charge of proposing copyright legislation to Parliament.
The protection of intellectual property (IP) of video games through copyright, patents, and trademarks, shares similar issues with the copyrightability of software as a relatively new area of IP law. The video game industry itself is built on the nature of reusing game concepts from prior games to create new gameplay styles but bounded by illegally direct cloning of existing games, and has made defining intellectual property protections difficult since it is not a fixed medium.
A collective work in the copyright law of the United States is a work that contains the works of several authors assembled and published into a collective whole. The owner of the work has the property rights in the collective work, but the authors of the individual works may retain rights in their contributions. Electronic reproduction of the whole work is allowed, but electronic reproduction of the individual works on their own, outside the context of the work as a whole, may constitute an infringement of copyright.
The Copyright law of El Salvador is legal rights to creative and artistic works under the laws of El Salvador. It was implemented in the Decree No. 604 of the Legislative Assembly of El Salvador on 16 of August 1993. This law aims to protect the economic and moral rights of Salvadoran authors and foreigners residing in El Salvador, granted by the mere fact of creating works that are literary, artistic and scientific.
