Do the French have their own “Haelan” case?

Résumé : No need to wait for the answer: French caselaw has no equivalent to the Haelan decision. No court has yet clearly asserted that celebrities “would feel sorely deprived” if they could no longer exploit their fame. As a result, there is no decision laying the foundation for an exclusive right in the market value of celebrity identity. Instead, there are innumerable decisions that in fact apply such a right, without ever explaining why, because French judges are very reluctant to articulate principles and lay down rules. Article 5 of the Civil Code, moreover, formally prohibits French judges from doing so. Nonetheless, a judge-made phenomenon very similar to the “right of publicity” (including its normative shortcomings) can be observed in France. It is therefore worth endeavoring a comparison between French and US publicity rights.

Type de publication : contribution - Référence : R. C. Dreyfuss & J. C. Ginsburg (ed.), Intellectual Property at the Edge. The Contested Contours of IP, Cambridge University Press, 2014