Legal studies

Photograph and heritage : Use and Right.

Nowadays, any photographic agency, either a general stock one or a one specialised in Fine Arts and History, is certain to freely produce and distribute its cultural heritage images. Faced with non-authorization, exorbitant fees, leonine contracts or exploitation rights on the property's image, photographers and photographic agencies gradually see the cultural heritage images escape from them on behalf of organizations in charge of preserving heritage and those which collect collateral rights.
For every shooting, for every publication, in order to distinguish the right fee relating to the service done from the excessive complaint, they need to master the French Code of Intellectual Property, the Code of State property, the famous "image right" of properties or persons and its jurisprudential evolutions. All this is stuck in a maze of laws, decrees, regulations, local decisions or private requirements, sometimes contradictory.
For this reason it appeared to us that it was necessary to make an overview of the different practices linked to shooting and to the publication of cultural heritage image, either public or private, and to provide professionals with judicial answers to difficulties they are confronted to.