FRANCE Law and Practice Contributed by: Vanessa Bouchara, Adèle Maier and Louise Lacroix, Cabinet Bouchara
under a system of “indivision”, thus all acts that affect the use/disclosure of the work require the unanimous agreement of all the co-authors, including assign - ments, licensing, etc. However, an exception to this general rule are cases where the contribution of each author can be individualised from the overall work, in which case, each author may exercise their copyright on their own part of the work, provided it does not The specific economic rights granted to the copyright owner are listed and governed by Articles L122-1 et seq of the French Intellectual Property Code, and include the following: • the right of representation, which is defined by law as the communication of the work to the public, by any means; and • the right of reproduction, which is defined by law as the material fixation of the work by any process that allows it to be communicated to the public in an indirect way. affect the overall work. 3.4 Copyright Rights Authors of graphic or plastic works benefit from an additional economic right, called droit de suite , which could be translated as “resale right”, which results in the right of the author to benefit from the proceeds of any sale of a work after the first transfer by the author or their successors in title, where a professional in the art market acts as a seller, buyer or intermediary. The moral rights granted to the copyright owner are listed and governed by Articles L121-1 et seq of the French Intellectual Property Code. They include the following: • the right of paternity, which entitles the author to request that their name be associated with the work; • the right to disclose the work, which allows the author to decide whether or not to make the work public (however, the author can no longer claim this right if they authorise the disclosure of the work); • the right to respect for their work (right of integrity), which prohibits the distortion of the work in a way that affects its integrity or spirit; and
• the right to reconsider or withdraw the work from the public sphere (this right is limited by the obliga - tion of the author to compensate the person that makes commercial use of the work for the eco - nomic prejudice caused by the withdrawal). Moral rights are perpetual and inalienable (they can - not be waived in any way). They can only be held by the author and their heirs, or granted to a third party upon the death of the author, by virtue of testamentary provisions. 3.5 Term of Protection and Termination The duration of economic rights lasts the author’s whole life and up to 70 years after the death of the author. There are no specific circumstances under which French law provides for a non-consensual ter - mination or shortening of rights vested in the author. French law does not establish a different treatment for each economic right at issue, nor the type of copy - righted work. However, the following specific rules apply, depending on the authors: • for collaborative works (ie, works involving more than one author), the duration of the economic rights expires 70 years after the death of the last surviving author; • for works published more than 70 years after the death of the author, a period of 25 years of protec - tion begins, with the rights belonging to the owner of the material work; • for works by authors who are declared to have died “for France”, there is an additional protection of 30 years; • for works by anonymous authors, the duration of the rights is 70 years, starting from the publication of the work; and • for collective works, the duration is 70 years from the publication of the work. 3.6 Collective Rights Management Systems The collective management of copyrights was created in France in the 18th century. There are legal socie - ties that manage copyrights on behalf of right-holders
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