[pd-discuss] PD help-French law

Thu Mar 10 19:35:01 UTC 2011

Thank you, Catherine, for this explanation.

It sounds like the Cour de Cassation only wanted to make sure that copyright terms did not shrink when France adopted the Term Directive.  That means that I can imagine several possible dates before which all non-posthumously published French works must be in the public domain:

A.  If someone "died for France" in 1914, he/she would receive a 100 year copyright term:  Life of the author + 70 years + 30 years extension.  

B.  Can someone "die for France" prior to WWI?  If someone could "die for France" in 1911, those works would still be copyrighted (life + 70 + 30).  That would mean that any non-posthumous published work of an author who died before 1911 must be in the public domain.  

C. Do such works also receive the WWI extension of 6 years plus either 83 or 152 days?  If that is the case, then sounds like a work for an author who died in 1907 (if "A" above applies) or 1903 (if "B" above applies) could still be protected by copyright.  (I don't even want to think about how to apply days of copyright protection...)

If A or B is the right answer, then my earlier suggestion that all non-posthumous works published by authors who died before 1911 are in the public domain everywhere in the world still stands.  If C applies, then we may have to move the date backwards.

There are of course works that were published later that are also in the public domain, but it looks like life + 100 (and maybe longer) is the cutoff below which we can say that all non-posthumously published works warrant the CC Public Domain Mark (since that is to be used "for works that are free of known copyright around the world").

Peter

-----Original Message-----
From: pd-discuss-bounces at lists.okfn.org [mailto:pd-discuss-bounces at lists.okfn.org] On Behalf Of Jasserand, Catherine
Sent: Thursday, March 10, 2011 4:47 AM
To: 'Public Domain discuss list'
Subject: Re: [pd-discuss] PD help-French law

Exactly. 

French law (Code de la propriété intellectuelle) contains three provisions extending the term of protection for works published during WWI and WWII as well as for works whose authors "died for France" during the WWs. These articles were not repealed by the Parliament when it implemented the Term Directive into French law. However, two decisions of the Court of Cassation (27.02.2007) have excluded the extension of terms of protection under the condition that the new term of protection does not shorten longer terms of protection that would have started before 1 July 1995. It seems according to this ruling that musical works, which were benefitting from a longer term of protection (70 years p.m.a. instead of 50 years p.m.a) before 1 July 1995 should still benefit from extensions due to wars.

Is it the reference you are looking for?

If you need more details, I can provide a short memo that I wrote on this (with different hypotheses) as well as the decisions of the Court of Cassation.

Kind regards,
Catherine Jasserand

IViR

-----Original Message-----
From: pd-discuss-bounces at lists.okfn.org [mailto:pd-discuss-bounces at lists.okfn.org] On Behalf Of Peter B. Hirtle
Sent: woensdag 9 maart 2011 23:02
To: Public Domain discuss list
Subject: Re: [pd-discuss] PD help

Wasn't there a recent French court case that said that the European harmonization directive superseded the French extensions for authors who were "mort pour la France"?

Can someone who knows duration in France speak to this?

Peter Hirtle

-----Original Message-----
From: pd-discuss-bounces at lists.okfn.org [mailto:pd-discuss-bounces at lists.okfn.org] On Behalf Of Andrew Gray
Sent: Tuesday, March 08, 2011 5:56 PM
To: Public Domain discuss list
Subject: Re: [pd-discuss] PD help

On 8 March 2011 22:29, Alberto Cerda <alberto at derechosdigitales.org> wrote:
> Mmmm.... I think the Mexican copyright law provides protection to 
> copyright holder for the author's life plus 100 years. To my 
> knowledge, that is the longest term, but, unfortunately, I do not know since when that terms apply.

There's an interesting detail in French law which provides that any author killed in wartime is given a thirty-year copyright extension, at least since 1914 or so. (It is apparently a bit variable in detail, thanks to EU harmonization, but there's definitely some potential for
life+up-to-100 cases).

http://www.celog.fr/cpi/lv1_tt2.htm (Art. L.123-10)

I'm not aware of any other country which has a similar provision, but it's quite possible there are some.

--
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk

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