I thought I saw an infringement of IP rights: Twitter users and copyright

A former Kat puts
her IPKat boots back on
(btw - speaking of boots - 
do you remember
this charming song?)

It is a truth universally acknowledged that Kats like birds very much, and especially birds that tweet about copyright issues. 

While procrastinating getting updates on Twitter yesterday, this Kat spotted a tweet by delightful former guest Kat and current MARQUES - Class 46 contributor Laetitia Lagarde (Jacobacci) on this very topic, ie Twitter + copyright + France [can there ever be a better combination?]. So she asked Laetitia to kindly provide more information to IPKat readers and she tweeted ''Oui!' back in response.

Here's what Laetitia writes:

"Copyright week might be over but today this former guest IPKat – who, among other things, still tweets [here] about IP and cats – found it appropriate to pen this post [in a bit more than 140 characters] on the story regarding a French book published by Larousse (a publishing house specialised in reference works such as dictionaries) that attracted heavy criticisms, notably [and most shamefully, nods Merpel] accusations of infringing Twitter’s users IP rights. The book's title is Les Perles des Tweets et du Net, and it consists of a collection of Twitter users' tweets. 

The pearls/gems of tweets
- 100% true!

Eleonora the Kat inspired and prompted the legal question of whether tweets can be protected by copyright (under US law) earlier this month.

Today, the French offer the following answer.

The “pearls” of Twitter consist of 289 tweets on the “best of the worst” of Twitter or vice-versa. 

However, the "worstest" thing was that Larousse did not contact the Twittos (French for Twitter users) to obtain their authorisation to use their tweets. According to Twitter ToS, users retain their rights to any content they submit, post or display on or through Twitter services (yet granting a non-exclusive licence to Twitter).

As it is likely to be the case also under EU originality standard, those tweets can be protected under French copyright law if the author has expressed his/her own personality in an original manner. Funnily enough, the very aim of this book was to publish the most original Twitter gems ...

Furthermore, most tweets were published in the book without attribution. Larousse thought that by doing so they were protecting themselves against legal action … But they ignored that this could be considered also as a violation the authors’ moral rights, in accordance with article L-121-1 of the French IP code. 

In a recent US case, French news agency AFP was found liable of copyright infringement for unauthorised reproduction of pictures that photographer Daniel Morel had made available on Twitter. In November 2013, the District Court for the Southern District of New York ruled that Twitter’s terms of service do not imply a licence for using images in a commercial context, thus rejecting AFP’s argument that it could use the pictures because they were freely available on Twitter.

Amidst claims of copyright infringement of Twitter users' copyright, yesterday evening Larousse announced (also via Twitter, of course) that it would withdraw its (infamous) book from the market. This is an appropriate response to viral accusations ... which perhaps could have been easily avoided in the first place [for instance just by reading this blog, sighs Merpel]

***

'Copyright' in Larousse dictionary here and 'mot d’auteur' here 

Pearls, gems and cats here

Pearl Jam on Twitter here"