Le 5/15/08 12:11 PM, Daniel Kinzler a écrit :
And they should all be deleted, IMHO.
Amen.
We have done this before several times for the Eiffel
Tower, the
Louvre Pyramid and the Atomium.
We still have pictures of the Louvre Pyramid and other buildings such as
the Grande Bibliothèque under the so-called "Terreaux jurisprudence"
(see
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/COM:FOP#France). Roughly, the
courts traditionally admit an exception to copyright if the protected
artwork is accessory compared to the main represented subject. I feel
the extent of this exception is sometimes stretched a bit too thin ("the
main subject is to show the neighbourhood; see, there are three cars
parked near that big copyrighted building").
The case of the Eiffel Tower is slightly different: the company
providing the lighting claims copyright over the lighting design, which
is a bit bold IMO. I don't know whether the claim has been tested in court.
I don't know how french law deals with
"ordinary" buildings though.
Buildings are protected by intellectual property law as long as they're
"works of the spirit" ("oeuvres de l'esprit"). Jurisprudence is
rather
restrictive: buildings seem to be protected only if they have a definite
artistic character ("caractère artistique certain") and provided they
don't belong to a series. This is a bit peculiar as the threshold of
originality has proved to be disturbingly low for other creations:
protection has been granted to a salad-shaker and a bottle-opener.
Marie-Lan