In an interesting case from the USA, a photographer, Art Dragulis launched an action for copyright infringement against the Kappa Map Group because he objected to the fact that they had reproduced his photograph of a rural scene on the cover of a commercial publication. Kappa had not requested his permission to do that and naturally one would usually require the permission of the copyright holder to re-use their work.

It transpired however that Mr Dragulis had posted the photograph on Flickr in 2008. In doing so he had chosen to make the photograph available under the Creative Commons “CC-BY-SA 2.00” licence. In contrast to some CC licences which include the “NC” stipulation, the CC-BY-SA licence does permit commercial re-use of the work (in this case, the photograph).

The court held that Kappa were justified in using the photograph for the cover of their published atlas, given that they had credited Mr Dragulis as the creator of the work and also included the correct licence information. In doing so they had fulfilled the CC licence requirements.

The court also discussed the “Share alike” requirement: Under the CC scheme only “derivative works” would need to be made available on the same terms (that is free of charge) under the “SA” licence. Kappa had presenting the photograph unmodified as part of a “collection” of copyright works. The only change they had made was some minimal cropping of the photograph which did not make it a derivative work. Therefore Kappa were entitled to reproduce the photograph and also charge for their atlas.

The case illustrates the importance of being careful in your choice of licence, since the photographer could have selected an “NC” licence. There are full reports by Techdirt and the 1709 Blog.

A Copyright dispute has been the subject of court hearings in Paris, which sheds an interesting light on French copyright law. French sculptor, Jean Cardot was incensed when Nike (together with an events company) organised a publicity stunt which involved dressing Cardot’s statute of Churchill in an oversize basketball jersey to celebrate the success of the French national team in 2011. The statue is situated on Avenue Winston Churchill in Paris.

Nike used images of the statue thus attired in the no. 9 basketball jersey for publicity purposes. For a report with pictures see the Independent. The Tribunal de Grande Instance found that Nike had infringed Cardot’s copyright and also his moral rights as the “auteur” of the statue, since he was not acknowledged as its creator. Interestingly, moral rights are perpetual in French law whereas in the UK they have they same duration as copyright.

Not satisfied with this initial result, Jean Cardot launched an appeal claiming that the damages awarded against Nike should have been higher. He was again successful at the Paris Cour d’Appel and the award was duly increased. Nike and their events company were each ordered to pay Jean Cardot 60,000 Euros for copyright infringement and 7,500 Euros for infringement of moral rights. The court took into account the commercial use which Nike had made of the pictures of the stunt and the fact that the events company had received a substantial fee for their part in organising it.

Would a similar action have succeeded in the UK? It seems unlikely. UK copyright law includes a specific exception for representations of works of art which are on permanent display in public places (Copyright, Designs and Patents Act section 62).