Copyright

Copyright, in the French tradition the author’s right, is the exclusive right recognised to the author of a work of the mind by the mere fact of its creation. It is governed by Book I of the French Intellectual Property Code. Copyright arises without formality, unlike the patent or the trade mark, which require a filing. Together with related rights, it constitutes literary and artistic property.

The conditions of copyright protection

The only condition is originality, understood as the imprint of the author’s personality or, in the words of the Court of Justice of the European Union, as the author’s own intellectual creation. The merit, purpose and genre of the work are irrelevant. A literary work, a photograph, an architect’s plan, a database or a piece of software may thus be protected. Ideas, concepts and methods, by contrast, remain free for all. The text of the Code is available on Légifrance.

The content of copyright

Copyright has two components. First, the economic rights, that is, the reproduction right and the performance right, which allow the author to authorise or prohibit the exploitation of the work and to draw remuneration from it. These rights last in principle seventy years after the author’s death. Second, moral rights, perpetual and inalienable, which protect the link between the author and the work. Copyright assignment contracts are subject to strict formalism, each assigned right having to be mentioned separately with its scope, purpose, place and duration.

Copyright applied to software

Software is protected by copyright, with adapted rules. The economic rights over software created by an employee in the exercise of the employee’s duties vest in the employer. Decompilation is allowed only within strict limits, for interoperability purposes. In practice, the protection of software, development contracts and IT maintenance contracts is a field of activity of the firm, presented on the page contracts.