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     overview

This note supplements the broader discussion of Moral Rights (aka droit moral) issues and legislation in the Intellectual Property guide elsewhere on this site.

It considers moral rights cases and controversies in Europe, the US and Australia.

Those cases are not concerned with blasphemy or obscenity. Instead they involve disagreement about disrespect for creativity and the reputation of a painter, architect, composer or other creator.

Particular regimes have recognised creators as having an inalienable right to be recognised as the author of a work, protected from false attribution of authorship (ie for no-one else to be identified as the author) and protected from inappropriate modification, distortion or interference with the integrity of that work.

Others have allowed creators to waive their rights, with the assumption being that waiver will be rewarded through an additional payment or merely through commission as an employee.

Moral rights protection has been invoked in a wide range of circumstances, including -

• 'remixes' of classical and contemporary music
• theatrical performances
• defacement of sculptures and murals
• modification of buildings
• reformatting of films, in particular "colorization" of black & white films by masters such as John Huston
• emulation of an artist's style by Google

     highlights

Salient cases include -

• in 1991 in France the heirs of John Huston (1906-1987) gained substantial damages in Huston v la Cinq over broadcast of a colourised version of his The Asphalt Jungle, although the director had waived his rights in the United States. He had assailed colourisation by saying "It's not color, it's like pouring 40 tablespoons of sugar water over a roast". The French court held that, in France, Huston was the film's author and through his estate was entitled to assert his moral rights. His heirs were awarded 600,000 Francs damages for injury to the film's integrity
• in 1993, the British singer George Michael was granted a pre-trial injunction by the Court of Appeal in London against release of the Bad Boys Megamix (a medley of snippets of various Wham! songs), with the court ruling that was capable of being distortion or mutilation amounting to derogatory treatment.
• a French court in the 1953 Soc le Chant de Monde v Twentieth Century Fox case prohibited use of a score by Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975) in a US anti-Soviet film. In contrast, in Shostakovich v Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp, the composer's claim was rejected by US courts in 1948 and 1949 on the basis that the right to artistic integrity as argued by the plaintiff was not found in US law
• in 1992 a French court held a theatrical director liable for infringement of Samuel Beckett's right of integrity by staging Waiting For Godot with the two lead roles played by women instead of men, contrary to Beckett's stage directions. It commented that exercise of a moral right in respect of a performance justified because from the audience's point of view "the work and the performance become one"
• Stockholm court of appeal finds in favour of Swedish film makers in 2006 after claims that their moral rights were breached by TV4 through insertion of advertisements in broadcast of films
• in the 1962 Buffet v Fersing case in France artist Bernard Buffet (1928-1999) gained damages from a buyer who had disassembled one of his works. Buffet executed a painting on six panels of a single refrigerator, signing only one panel. The court held that the single signature was evidence of his intention that the work be understood as a whole; he was thus able to recover damages for violation of his integrity right when the owner of the refrigerator sold each panel separately.
• in the 1982 Snow v Eaton Center case an artist successfully claim breach of integrity after a Canadian shopping centre draped decorative ribbons over the necks of his sculpted geese.
• in 2004 the Cour d'appel de Paris imposed a symbolic fine of €1 on the publisher of a sequel of Les Miserables, ruling that the work infringed the moral rights of Victor Hugo (1802-1885), who not would have allowed a third person to write a continuation of his novel
• Appeal Court of Barcelona finds in favour of singer Tom Waits during January 2006 in moral rights case against Volkswagen-Audi and a Spanish production company for unauthorised adaptation of a Waits song and impersonation of his voice in a television commercial
• in October 2005 an Italian court rules that Italian network TV Internazionale (TeleMontecarlo) breached the moral rights of US director Fred Zinnemann (1907-1997) by recurrently broadcasting a colourised version of his 1944 The Seventh Cross.

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