Generally, the author of an original “intellectual work” exclusively holds moral and economic rights over their creation.
– Moral rights allow the author to claim authorship of their work and control its destiny by opposing any distortion, mutilation, or other modification without their authorization.
– Economic rights grant the author and their beneficiaries the possibility of obtaining remuneration in exchange for the exploitation of the work.
It is therefore prohibited to use an author’s work without their permission.
However, the French Intellectual Property Code, under Article L.122-5, has provided for some exceptions, notably the “short quotation” exception.
For a short quotation to be valid, certain cumulative conditions must be met, namely:
- The quotation must include the author’s name and the source;
- The reproduction must be identical. The work must not be modified or distorted;
- The reproduction must be partial and short. The law does not define the extent to which reproduction is authorized nor does it give specifics on what portion of the work could be used without permission. Consequently, the assessment will be made on a case-by-case basis, taking into account the context, usage, standards, and length of the quoted work, and obviously the form and length of the quoting work into which the excerpt will be incorporated;
- The quotation must be justified by the critical, polemical, pedagogical, scientific, or informative nature of the work into which it is incorporated. Therefore, the quotation must illustrate points presented in the quoting work and relate to the quoted work.
Conclusion:
If these four conditions are met, you can use an excerpt from a work without having to request authorization from the author.
If not all conditions are met, it is appropriate to request authorization from the rights holder; failing which, the author may take action for infringement. Indeed, reproducing a work without the author’s authorization is punishable as a copyright infringement offense.
Examples :
– A sequence of about ten seconds from a video game does not constitute a short quotation (CA Paris, October 5, 2000, RG 1998/15937);
– Excerpts of about ten seconds taken from a 33-minute documentary, representing 10% of the total length of the borrowed work, are too long to qualify as a short quotation (TGI Paris, June 24, 2010, RG 09/01926);
– Incorporating excerpts from a documentary into a film without the authors’ authorization and without mentioning their names cannot fall under the short quotation exception and infringes upon the right of authorship and integrity of the work when the director’s “voice-over” accompanied the borrowed images (CA Paris, September 9, 2014, RG 14/00163);
– Excerpts of 30 seconds from an original 3-minute song are not considered short enough to be short quotations (TGI Paris, May 15, 2002, RG 00/0947). On the other hand, six short excerpts of a few seconds from a show inserted into a 52-minute documentary could be considered short quotations (CA Paris, December 3, 2003, RG 2002/00798) as could a 2-minute 52-second excerpt from a 2h21 film (CA Paris, March 31, 1999, RG 1996/88663);
– Reproductions of graphic works such as paintings or photographs, in small size, are not short quotations (Cass, January 22, 1991, RIDA 1991, n° 147, p. 119; CDA 1991, n° 35, p. 1, note L. Bochurberg; JCP 1991, II, 21680, note L. Bochurberg). Once the reproduction is integral, it cannot be a short quotation, even if the reproduction is of minimal size;
– A collection containing film lines has no informational purpose; therefore, the short quotation exception cannot apply (TGI Paris, April 9, 2013, RG 13-52517).
