Law Commons^™

Authors' Rights In France: The Moral Right Of The Creator Of A Commissioned Work To Compel The Commissioning Party To Complete The Work, André Françon, Jane C. Ginsburg

Faculty Scholarship

The French law protecting authors' rights incorporates two distinct regimes of rights, "pecuniary" rights, and "moral" rights. As the denomination indicates, pecuniary rights pertain to the author's economic interests, and provide the author a monopoly in the reproduction and public performance of his work. Moral rights safeguard the author's "personality" interest in his work. Despite the appellation "moral" rights, the author's claims under French law to the security of his personality as expressed in his work are not precatory: moral rights entail several distinct and enforceable interests. These are: the right to make the work known to the public "droit …