Collective work (France)
A "collective work" (French: œuvre collective) is a specific legal concept under French copyright law (specifically, the Intellectual Property Code, Code de la propriété intellectuelle). It refers to a work created at the initiative of a natural or legal person who publishes it under their direction and name, and in which the personal contributions of the various authors who participated in its creation are merged into the overall work, without it being possible to attribute to each author a distinct right in the work as a whole.
Key characteristics of a collective work:
- Initiation and Direction: The work is created under the initiative and direction of a person (individual or entity) who orchestrates the contributions.
- Unified Publication: The work is published under the name of the initiator, not the individual contributors.
- Merged Contributions: The individual contributions are integrated into the overall work in such a way that they lose their individual identity and cannot be easily separated.
- Inability to Identify Individual Authors' Rights: It is impossible to identify and distinguish the individual contributions of each author, making it impossible to allocate separate rights to each contributor concerning the entirety of the collective work.
In essence, the person or entity initiating and directing the collective work is considered the author of the work and holds the copyright, assuming the rights that would normally belong to individual authors. This is a significant distinction from collaborative works where individual authors retain rights to their specific contributions.
Examples of works that might be considered collective works (depending on the specific circumstances of their creation):
- Encyclopedias
- Dictionaries
- Newspapers and periodicals (though this can be complex depending on the employment status of the contributors)
- Databases (in certain contexts)
The legal framework surrounding collective works aims to address situations where individual contributions are so intertwined that assigning separate copyright to each author is impractical. It clarifies copyright ownership and facilitates the dissemination of works created through collective effort.