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One of Malka's Flair photographs A few days ago this blog  reported  on an interesting  decision  of the Swedish Supreme Court that held that unauthorized 'appropriation' of a substantial part of a photograph for use in a painting did not amount to copyright infringement, as the meaning of the defendant's work was different from the original work. A few days ago, also a French court (Versailles Court of Appeal) had the opportunity to decide a case ( Malka v Klasen , RG No  15/06029,  16 March 2018 ) with a similar factual background.  Unlike the Swedish Supreme Court, the Versailles Court of Appeal held that the defendant had  infringed  the claimant's copyright. It found that the defendant could neither invoke the parody defence under French copyright law nor freedom of (artistic) expression under the  European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) . Let's see what happened. Background Photographer Alix Malka ...

Image Search for IPKat As reported by this blog  [ here ,  here  and  here ] , earlier this year France adopted  a law  [ Loi No 2016-925  on  freedom of creation, architecture and cultural heritage]  which - among other things - introduced new provisions  [ Articles L 136-1 to 136-4 ]  into the  Code de la propriété intellectuelle  (CPI) to regulate the  exercise of the exclusive rights of reproduction and representation vis-à-vis automated image referencing services.  The content of the new provisions As explained by Brad Spitz in a  post  published on the Kluwer Copyright Blog, "the new provisions will apply to ‘automated image search services’, which  Article L.136-1 IPC   defines as any online public communication service that reproduces and makes available to the public for purposes of indexing and SEO, plastic, graphic or photographic works, collected in an autom...

... possibly true Can search engines be ordered to filter  all  results containing certain keywords or a  combination of certain keywords? In a nutshell, this was the issue that the Tribunal de Grande Instance de Paris (TGI) addressed in the context of litigation between  SNEP   [the French Syndicate of Phonographic Publishing ]   and Microsoft. In its  decision  on 8 July 2016  [this post has been written relying on the original French version of the judgment]  the TGI answered the question above in the negative. Background Claiming that through Microsoft’s search engine Bing users could access infringing copies of phonograms or video recordings, SNEP sought an injunction against Microsoft to implement filters on Bing (under all top level domains) to prevent – for a period of 12 months – the display of results containing in their domain name the word ‘torrent’ and provided when conducting the following queries:  ...

AG Melchior Wathelet Amidst all the   madness  hectic legislative activity surrounding orphan works and out-of- print books that took place in Europe in the first half of 2010s (also as a reflection and echo of the unfolding   Google Books saga   in the US), in 2012 France adopted a   loi   ( Law No 2012-287 of 1 March 2012 ) to allow and regulate the digital exploitation of out-of-print 20th century books. This piece of legislation amended the French  C ode de la propriété intellectuelle  by adding a new chapter ( Chapter IV  - Articles L 134-1 to L 134-9, subsequently amended) to Title III of Book I therein.  Among other things, this French law gives approved collecting societies the right to authorise the reproduction and the representation in digital form of out-of-print books, while allowing the authors of those books, or their successors in title, to oppose or put an end to that practice subject to cer...