Source: http://ipkitten.blogspot.co.uk/2016/11/the-cjeu-decision-in-soulier-what-does.html
Timestamp: 2017-06-23 00:00:01
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The IPKat: The CJEU decision in Soulier: what does it mean for laws other than the French one on out-of-print books?
The late Marc Soulier,also known as Ayerdhal
reported by this blog through a breaking news post, yesterday the Court of
Justice of the European Union (CJEU) issued its decision in Soulier and Doke,
C-301/15.
was a reference for a preliminary ruling from the French Conseil d’État
(Council of State) and concerned the compatibility with EU law [read: the InfoSoc Directive] of the 2012 French law to allow and regulate the digital
explained more at length here, by
introducing into the French Code de la propriété intellectuelle (CPI) a new chapter [Chapter IV - Articles L 134-1 to L 134-9, subsequently
amended] to
Title III of Book I, this piece of legislation has vested approved collecting societies with 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 certain conditions. More specifically, the relevant implementing decree has established a
yesterday's post, I expressed the view that this new CJEU decision might
have far-reaching implications, that go well beyond the sole piece of
legislation at the centre of the case.
reading the decision, this seems indeed to be the case.
the CJEU said
its 53-paragraph decision, also clarifying that the case had nothing to do with
copyright exceptions [so that, in
line with the Opinion, here, of Advocate General (AG) Wathelet, Article 5 of the InfoSoc
Directive would be irrelevant],
the Court noted that the national legislation at issue would call into
consideration: (1) the right of reproduction within the meaning of
Article 2(a) of the InfoSoc Directive; and (2) the right to authorise the
representation under that form and that such a representation constitutes a
communication to the public within the meaning of Article 3(1) of that
The actual question referred by the French court should be therefore read
as asking whether Article 2(a) and Article 3(1) of the InfoSoc
Directive preclude national legislation that gives an approved collecting
society the right to authorise the reproduction and communication to the
public, 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 on the conditions that that legislation lays down.
The other author at the centre of the case:Sara Doke
Court noted at the outset that the protection conferred by Articles 2(a) and
3(1) of the InfoSoc Directive must be given a broad interpretation. It follows [para 31] that, in
line with the Berne Convention, “that protection must be
understood, in particular, as not being limited to the enjoyment of the rights
guaranteed by Article 2(a) and Article 3(1) of Directive 2001/29, but
as also extending to the exercise of those rights.”
Court then recalled that [para
33] such exclusive
rights are preventive in nature, in the sense that any reproduction or
communication to the public of a work by a third party requires the prior
consent of its author.
most straightforward consequence of this is that [para 34], subject to the
exceptions and limitations laid down exhaustively in Article 5, any use of
a work carried out by a third party without such prior consent (of the author)
must be regarded as infringing copyright in that work. The form and substance of consent
said, the Court conceded [para
35] that neither
Article 2(a) nor Article 3(1) specify the way in which the prior
consent of the author must be expressed: those provisions do not require such
consent to be necessarily expressed explicitly. Hence, those provisions also allow that consent to be expressed implicitly. An example - said the Court - is what happens in the case of
communication to the public in an online environment with the (psychological)
notion of ‘new public’ [para 36], as adopted in Svensson.
“[T]he objective of
increased protection of authors to which recital 9 of Directive 2001/29 refers
implies that the circumstances in which implicit consent can be admitted must
be strictly defined in order not to deprive of effect the very principle of the
author’s prior consent.
In particular, every author must actually be informed of the
future use of his work by a third party and the means at his disposal to
prohibit it if he so wishes.
Failing any actual prior information relating to that future
use, the author is unable to adopt a position on it and, therefore, to prohibit
it, if necessary, so that the very existence of his implicit consent appears
purely hypothetical in that regard.
Consequently, without guarantees ensuring that authors are
actually informed as to the envisaged use of their works and the means at their
disposal to prohibit it, it is de facto impossible for them to adopt any
position whatsoever as to such use.”
said so, the Court turned to consideration of the French law, and noted how
that legislation does not appear to offer a mechanism ensuring that authors are
actually and individually informed. Therefore, it is not inconceivable that
some of the authors concerned are not, in reality, even aware of the envisaged
use of their works and, therefore, that they are not able to adopt a position,
one way or the other, on it. In those circumstances, a mere lack of opposition
on their part cannot be regarded as the expression of their implicit consent to
all this, the Court did not place an absolute ban on future legislative
interventions based on the InfoSoc Directive [and it would seem also on other pieces of legislation, eg the
recent proposal of the EU Commission for a Directive on copyright in the Digital Single Market, here].
In fact [para 45]:
“Admittedly, Directive
2001/29 does not preclude national legislation, such as that at issue in the
main proceedings, from pursuing an objective such as the digital exploitation
of out-of-print books in the cultural interest of consumers and of society as a
whole. However, the pursuit of that objective and of that interest cannot
justify a derogation not provided for by the EU legislature to the protection
that authors are ensured by that directive.”
Court also added that the InfoSoc Directive does not prohibit Member States
from granting certain rights or certain benefits to third parties, such as
publishers, as long as those rights and benefits do not harm the rights which
that directive gives exclusively to authors. When the author of a work decides to put an end to the future exploitation of
that work in a digital format, that right must be capable of being exercised:
a) without having to depend, in
certain cases, on the concurrent will of persons other than those to whom that
author had given prior authorisation to proceed with such a digital
exploitation and, thus, on the agreement of the publisher holding only the
rights of exploitation of that work in a printed format [para 49]; and
b) without being subject to any particular
formality [para 50].
and Article 3(1) of the InfoSoc Directive must be interpreted as
precluding national legislation that gives an approved collecting society the
right to authorise the reproduction and communication to the public in digital
form of ‘out-of-print’ books, namely, books published in France before
1 January 2001 which are no longer commercially distributed by a publisher
and are not currently published in print or in digital form, while allowing the
to that practice, on the conditions that that legislation lays down.
marked an important moment in CJEU copyright jurisprudence. Any freedom left?
Although the Court relied
on concepts also employed in previous decisions [eg that economic rights must be interpreted broadly and considered
preventive in nature], it used the so called
author principle [ie the principle that, as
a general rule, the author is also the first owner of copyright] to push the boundaries of EU harmonisation further and, by
doing so, restrict Member States' legislative freedom.
First, despite contrasting
hints in the past in which the CJEU appeared to employ the terms 'authors' and
'rightholders' interchangeably, the Court reinforced the idea that who the
InfoSoc Directive intends to grant a 'high level of protection' to is authors.
Secondly, although
not referring explicitly to the notion of EU preemption [on which see also here],
the CJEU fully embraced it. In this sense, there is no gap between the CJEU judgment
and the AG Opinion [paras
55-57], which rejects the view that
the national legislation at issue would not affect the protection of
copyright because it simply constitutes an arrangement for managing certain
rights which the InfoSoc Directive does not preclude. What matters - for both
the CJEU and the AG - is whether authors have had the possibility to express their individual consent. From a practical
It would appear that, post-Soulier and lacking
specific 'EU-endorsed authorisation' to the contrary, national legislative
initiatives (including licensing schemes) that fail to incorporate appropriate
and streamlined procedures to (1) inform authors of possible future uses of
their works, and (2) obtain their relevant, individual, consent are likely to be regarded
as incompatible with EU law.
In light of all this one
may wonder whether another piece of French legislation, ie the law on freedom of creation, architecture and cultural heritage, is against EU law. As this
blog reported, among other things this introduced new
provisions [Articles L 136-1 to 136-4] into the CPI to
regulate the exercise
of the exclusive rights of reproduction and representation vis-à-vis automated
image referencing services. Article
136-2(1) CPI clarifies that the
publication of a plastic artwork, graphic or photographic work by an online
communication service is subject to the consent - not of
authors - but rather one or more collecting societies appointed to this end by
the French Ministry of Culture. It would appear that an author only has the
right to indicate which collecting society would undertake this task (lacking such indication, then a presumption would operate in favour of a designated collecting society), but not also authorise the relevant collecting society to authorise the making of acts restricted by copyright.
On a similar note, as suggested by Sylvie Nérisson on the Kluwer Copyright Blog at the time of the AG Opinon, also certain
national licensing schemes - including systems of extended collective licensing
- may fall short of what EU law requires in terms of authors' consent. All in all ... a subtle message from the CJEU
provisions on out-of-commerce works as contained in the recently proposed
Directive on copyright in the Digital Single Market, Article 7(1) states that:
States shall provide that when a collective management organisation, on behalf
of its members, concludes a non-exclusive licence for non-commercial purposes
with a cultural heritage institution for the digitisation, distribution,
communication to the public or making available of out-of-commerce works or
other subject-matter permanently in the collection of the institution, such a
non-exclusive licence may be extended or presumed to apply to rightholders of
the same category as those covered by the licence who are not represented by
the collective management organisation, provided that: (a)
the collective management organisation is, on the basis of mandates from
rightholders, broadly representative of rightholders in the category of works
or other subject-matter and of the rights which are the subject of the
licence; (b)
equal treatment is guaranteed to all rightholders in relation to the terms of
the licence; (c)
all rightholders may at any time object to their works or other subject-matter
being deemed to be out of commerce and exclude the application of the licence
to their works or other subject-matter."
One may question whether
the extension of the licence also to non-members and the fact that the
mechanism envisaged by the proposed directive is opting-out rather than opting-in, is
fully compliant with Soulier.
In all this, yesterday's
CJEU decision does not necessarily mean the end for all these sorts of initiatives - whether
at the national or EU levels. However, what is (now?) required is a more careful
approach by relevant legislators to ensure that the principles established at the
level of the InfoSoc Directive and elaborated further in yesterday's CJEU
decision are fully respected. As a final note - although the CJEU did not bring fundamental
rights into the picture this time - as I also discussed here, these may matter in a situation in which authors are deprived of their ability to
authorise the making of acts restricted by copyright. In fact, it may be argued that all this could amount to a deprivation of authors' fundamental right to intellectual property protection, as per Article 17(2) of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union. Posted by
Marc Soulier C‑301/15,
out-of-commerce,