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Rideau, Frédéric --- "Aspects of French literary property developments in the eighteenth (and nineteenth) centuries" [2016] ELECD 476; in Alexander, Isabella; Gómez-Arostegui, Tomás H. (eds), "Research Handbook on the History of Copyright Law" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2016) 391

Book Title: Research Handbook on the History of Copyright Law

Editor(s): Alexander, Isabella; Gómez-Arostegui, Tomás H.

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781783472390

Section: Chapter 18

Section Title: Aspects of French literary property developments in the eighteenth (and nineteenth) centuries

Author(s): Rideau, Frédéric

Number of pages: 32

Abstract/Description:

The general foundations of the French droit d’auteur system developed during the eighteenth century, but the principle of exclusivity originally stemmed from royal book privileges, a system which upheld exclusivity (l’exclusif, as Denis Diderot would put it) on book publication, for a limited time. The evolution from privileges to authors as proprietorsin their own right has been deeply debated, both in droit d’auteur and Anglo-American copyright systems. In this respect, the numerous sources directly available on the AHRC-funded Primary Sources on Copyright (1450–1900) website help contribute to objective comparisons. The evolution that occurred showed strong convergences, in particular between France and England, from the time when property rights were roughly envisaged, until being clearly claimed in a more absolute way from the end of the seventeenth century. In other words, the exclusive right of reproduction was to be grounded upstream on the first step of labour leading to publication, that is, on the author’s labour. It is also a well-known paradox (in France, but in England also), although eventually an easy one to explain, that the main supporters of literary property theory were not the authors themselves but primarily the Parisian booksellers, at the expense of their provincial counterparts, who had been progressively neglected in the attribution of the royal favours and privileges.