Author's rights: how do you reuse content?
As part of your teaching or research activities, you may need to re-use works (or excerpts of works) created by others. The purpose of this page is to explain the main principles of French author's rights and the good habits you need to acquire in order to respect them. If your situation is not covered here, please do not hesitate to contact us.
French author's rights in brief
The French Intellectual Property Code is comprised of the laws governing literary and artistic property and industrial property. It covers "all works of the mind, whatever their kind, form of expression, merit or purpose". (Translated from Article L112-1)
Author's rights are applicable from the moment the work is created: it is not necessary to register it with an organisation or to include a statement such as "all rights reserved".
It is therefore prudent to assume that all content is subject to author's rights and that its reuse requires authorisation.
Author's rights provide the necessary protection for the beneficiaries of a work by granting them two types of rights:
- moral rights (disclosure, respect, authorship and withdrawal): these guarantee the personal link between the author and the work. Only the author can decide to make their work public or request that it be withdrawn from publication. The author may refuse any modification or reuse that would undermine the spirit of their work, and their name must be cited. These rights are perpetual and inalienable: they must always be respected, even after the author's death, and the author cannot transfer them to a third party.
- patrimonial rights (performance and reproduction): these represent the economic dimension of author's rights. These rights concern the way in which a work is made public or reproduced (any act of duplication, including downloading or a simple reduction in format). They are transferable and limited in time (duration of the author's life + 70 years, with a potential extension for authors who died for France).
Depending on the nature of the work, the rightholder may be a single author or several different authors (work produced alone, collaborative work, composite work, collective work...).
Author's rights provide important protection for the author, but they also act as a barrier to the reuse of a work. Throughout the duration of protection, it is impossible to use or modify a work without authorisation from the rightholder. This can lead to deadlock: what can be done if, for example, the heirs of an author cannot be found?
To reuse a work within your own work, you need to determine which rights apply.
This applies even if you want to reuse your own work.
General case: the author has not taken any specific steps. "All rights reserved" | The work is covered by the provisions of the Intellectual Property Code, as described above. You must therefore request authorisation from the rightholder. Please note! If the work has been published, it is possible that the author has assigned their rights of performance and reproduction to the publisher. The rightholder is therefore the publisher and no longer the author. You will therefore need to ask your publisher for permission if you wish to reuse your own work (in full or as excerpts, e.g. figures from a scientific publication). |
Special case: The work has entered the public domain, the period of protection of patrimonial rights having ended. | It is no longer necessary to request authorisation. Please note! Moral rights remain, as do any rights covering other works derived from the one in the public domain (e.g. a musician performing a composition by Mozart). |
Special cases: Exceptions provided for by law
| The law directly authorises use in these cases. Moral rights apply. If there is the slightest doubt about the nature of the circumstances of reuse, it is preferable to request authorisation nevertheless. |
The author wished to authorise the reuse of his work in advance and chose a Creative Commons licence. "Certain rights reserved" | You may use their work, subject to the terms of the licence. |
Your work is not published and you have not taken any specific steps. | You retain the possibility of authorising or not authorising the reuse of your work with each request you receive, but you also limit the opportunities for reuse. The obligation to make a request and to contact you is a disincentive. |
You have signed a publishing contract transferring all or part of your performance and reproduction rights. | You have lost the possibility of authorising or not authorising the reuse of your work: it is now your publisher who holds this right, under the terms of the contract. You can, however, negotiate an amendment to your contract! |
You choose a Creative Commons licence, whether your work is published (for example, via an open access publication) or not. | You authorise in advance the use, distribution, commercialisation and/or modification of your work under certain conditions. The choice of licence allows you to specify these conditions. |
Free licences allow the conditions of author's rights to be relaxed to make it easier to reuse a work.
A licence is a contract. If you choose a Creative Commons licence, this does not mean that you give up your rights: moral rights remain perpetual and inalienable. Your name must always be cited, regardless of how your work is reused.
With Creative Commons licences, you grant permissions in advance to the users of your work: at the very least, you give permission to reproduce, distribute, and communicate your work free of charge.
You can then adjust this permission using different options that you can combine. These are represented by pictograms:
Attribution [BY]: The author's name must be cited. This condition is present in all six Creative Commons licence combinations compatible with French law on author's rights.
No commercial use [NC]: The work may be reproduced, distributed or modified, but its use may not be commercial.
No derivative works [ND]: The work cannot be modified (cropped, resized, translated...).
Share alike [SA]: The new derivative work must be shared under the same Creative Commons licence as the original work.
This diagram can help you choose the right combination of options for your needs:
How do I apply a licence?
- Make sure you have written permission from all the rightholders of your work and its parts, if you are reusing excerpts from other works.
- Take the time to choose your licence by rereading the terms on the Creative Commons website. Note that your decision will be irrevocable.
- Use the licence chooser and answer the questions, which include: Do you wish to authorise the sharing of adaptations of your work? Do you authorise commercial uses of your work?
- Copy the generated image and insert it in your document, along with the link to the licence: thanks to this link, future users of your work will know what rights you have granted them.
What is the educational exception?
If the content you wish to reuse is not licensed under a Creative Commons licence, you may still benefit from authorisations as part of your teaching or research activity, under conditions specified by law. The educational exception is provided for in item e) of the 3rd paragraph of article L. 122-5 of the French Intellectual Property Code.
It concerns the reuse of works in the context of teaching and research for the exclusive purpose of illustration. The target audience must be mainly pupils, students, teachers or researchers directly involved with the teaching or research activity..
To allow this exception, the Ministry of National Education and Youth, the Ministry of Higher Education and Research, and the Conference of University Presidents have signed agreements with author's rights collective management companies (PROCIREP, SACEM, companies representing rightholders for printed works) to which they pay annual lump sums.
- Texts
Only excerpts may be distributed, unless the text is short (e.g. a poem). An excerpt represents a maximum of 10% of the complete work.
- Images
Their use is authorised without limit.
- Videos
Showing or sharing the full video: it is forbidden to use a copy purchased or rented for private use. Public broadcasting rights must be paid to organisations that have negotiated educational rights (ADAV, COLACO, etc.). Some platforms make works available for distribution in the classroom (see the memo on Éduscol (French only)).
Showing or sharing excerpts: this is free but limited to a maximum length of six minutes, which may not exceed one tenth of the total duration of the work. If several excerpts are shown, their total duration may not exceed 15% of the complete work.
- Music
The performance of the complete work in a classroom is authorised.
Excerpts may be broadcast as part of symposia, conferences and seminars. An excerpt is limited to a maximum length of thirty seconds, but may not exceed one tenth of the total duration of the work. If several excerpts are broadcast, their total duration may not exceed 15% of the complete work.
- Texts
Only excerpts may be distributed, unless the text is short (e.g. a poem). An excerpt represents a maximum of 10% of the complete work.
- Images
A maximum of twenty images may be used, with a resolution of 72 dpi and a maximum definition of 400x400 pixels.
- Videos
Only excerpts may be distributed, up to a maximum length of six minutes, but no more than one tenth of the total duration of the work. If several excerpts are distributed, their total duration may not exceed 15% of the complete work.
- Music
Only excerpts may be distributed, of a maximum length of thirty seconds, but not exceeding one tenth of the total duration of the work. If several excerpts are distributed, their total duration may not exceed 15% of the complete work.
Any use of a printed work (text, image, sheet music, news article) must be declared to the Centre français d'exploitation du droit de copie (CFC) (French only).
Authorisations are identical to those for use on the institution's intranet. Doctoral students may insert excerpts into their thesis and disseminate their thesis online. However, it must not be possible to extract these excerpts from the thesis file: it is forbidden to disseminate them as an additional file.
- Texts
Only excerpts may be published, unless the text is short (e.g. a poem). An excerpt represents a maximum of 10% of the complete work.
- Images
A maximum of twenty images may be used, with a resolution of 72 dpi and a maximum definition of 400x400 pixels.
- Videos
Only excerpts may be included, up to a maximum length of six minutes, but no more than one tenth of the total duration of the work. If several excerpts are included, their total duration may not exceed 15% of the complete work.
- Music
Only excerpts may be included, of a maximum length of thirty seconds, but not exceeding one tenth of the total duration of the work. If several excerpts are included, their total duration may not exceed 15% of the complete work.
Please note: you may not reproduce any sheet music in a thesis, even in the form of an excerpt.
References
Code de la propriété intellectuelle (consulted 29/09/2022)
Creative Commons website (consulted 29/09/2022)
Connaître et utiliser les licences Creative Commons, CoopIST (consulted 29/09/2022)
Bordignon F., "Comment attribuer ou utiliser une licence Creative Commons ?" (consulted 03/10/2022)
Guide to Creative Commons for Scholarly Publications and Educational Resources (consulted 03/10/2022)
Carnet de recherche Éthique et droit en SHS : Les exceptions au droit d'auteur et aux droits voisins (consulted 29/09/2022)
Guide sur l'utilisation des contenus de la Mission Appui au patrimoine immatériel de l'État (consulted 29/09/2022)
For the English translation, a version of the French intellectual property code translated into English in the WIPO Lex database (note that the version is recent but not the version currently in force) (consulted 18/02/2025)