France: : Audiovisual adaptation of a political book constitutes free-riding

• Autores: Amélie Blocman
• Localización: IRIS: Legal Observations of the European Audiovisual Observatory, ISSN-e 1023-8565, Nº. 1, 2016
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • A journalist who wrote a book about a famous political adviser to the Vth Republic felt that a documentary devoted to “the secrets of the Elysée’s gurus” broadcast on a public-service television channel two years after the book’s publication constituted an infringing adaptation of his work. He therefore had the producer and the channel summoned to face charges of infringement. When the Regional Court in Paris concurred, the producer and the television channel appealed against the judgment. In its decision delivered on 17 November 2015, the Paris Court of Appeal overturned the original judgment. It recalled that neither the investigative journalism, the historical events, the information regarding political life, including a number of anecdotes and revelations, nor the slogans of a political campaign, which belonged to history, could in themselves be protected under copyright. On the other hand, the originality of the work lay in the combination of the author’s arbitrary selection of the facts reported and the way in which he analysed them, his drafting skills, and the light he personally shed on the psychology and the actions of the political adviser who is the subject of the book. The Court observed, however, that - unlike the book - the documentary only devoted a few moments to the personal life of the person concerned: the spotlight was not on the person, but on the new strategies of political communication. The Court found that the documentary’s lack of emphasis on the personal life of the subject of the book meant that it was not possible to detect the same combination of characteristics that made the book an original work.