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Resumption of speech and copyright, infringement?

The recent recovery by Marine Le Pen of part of a speech by François Felon has caused a lot of ink to flow...

Today I suggest that you come back to this incident and analyze it in the light of copyright.

The least we can say is that there has been a recovery to the word...

Marine Le Pen has, moreover, recognized this recovery and assumed it as a nod to the voters of François Felon (see about this here).

However, it is not on the motivations and justifications of Marine Le Pen that I wish to dwell here. No, what this episode made me want to do is explain the links between speech and copyright.

A speech, as a sequence of words and sentences, does indeed constitute a work that can be protected within the meaning of copyright registration service (see, moreover, on this subject Article 2 of the Berne Convention for the Protection of Works literary and artistic works which classifies among literary and artistic works “lectures, addresses, sermons and other works of the same nature”).

In principle, therefore, the protection of speech by copyright is not open to debate.

On a case-by-case basis, however, it will still be necessary to assess whether the envisaged speech:

·         is “original” (because only “original” works are protected by copyright);

·         is “formatted” (which will be the case if the speech has already been delivered in public and / or written down before it is delivered in public).

A priori , and until proof to the contrary, the speech delivered by François Felon is original in the sense that it is the result of free and creative choices by its author around various themes selected and arranged in a particular way. Likewise, literary and historical words, phrases and quotes have been the subject of free and creative choices by the author of this speech.

Consequently, - and unless a third party comes forward by establishing that he had previously written and / or delivered a speech articulated around the same ideas, and arranged, structured, formalized in the same or a very similar way-, the speech delivered by François Felon must be considered as satisfying the condition of originality.

As for the formatting, there is no doubt, since François Felon delivered his speech publicly and this speech was recorded (see the video above). It is therefore not even necessary to see if François Felon had previously written his speech on paper… since there is a video recording of his speech as he delivered it.

Original and formatted, the speech delivered by François Felon must therefore be considered as protected by copyright.

However, it so happens that Marine Le Pen took over and uttered to the word near certain parts of the speech of François Felon (it is enough to listen to the video above to realize it).

A priori, Marine Le Pen has therefore committed an act of copyright infringement; what is called in the jargon an act of forgery.

Indeed, just as a theater company cannot perform, in front of an audience, a play written by an author without requesting and obtaining the authorization of this author (often subject to payment of copyright), Marine Le Pen does not could not deliver François Felon’s speech in public without asking and obtaining his authorization.

Unless, of course, François Felon is not the author of this speech!

However, this is precisely what seems to have happened in the present case: the author of the disputed speech would be a certain Mr. Paul-Marie Chouteau, who apparently agreed that Marine Le Pen should repeat certain parts of the speech. That he had previously written for François Felon (I put, of course, all this in the conditional since I am basing myself on explanations provided).

So obviously, if the author of the speech delivered by François Felon gave the authorization to Marine Le Pen to resume certain parts of said speech, there is no longer a legal problem. Only a possible moral problem or political expediency would remain...

Yes, but be careful, not so fast...

It would still be necessary to ensure that between the speech written by the third party and the speech delivered by François Felon, there were not too many differences because if François Felon improvised a little (too much), the work pronounced by François Felon and repeated verbatim by Marine Le Pen is no longer the speech initially written by Mr. Chouteau but the improvisation carried out by François Felon… and in this case we again fall into the need to obtain authorization the author of the improvisation, namely François Felon.