Dans le cadre des Midis de l’éthique du CRÉ, Hannah Carnegy-Arbuthnott nous offrira une présentation intitulée « In defense of honour? What justification for moral rights in copyright doctrine? ».

Résumé

Moral Rights are a subsection of intellectual property rights which are independent of an artist’s economic rights over a piece of work. Article 6bis of the Berne Convention grants authors rights to attribution, including the right to object to false attribution of authorship, as well as allowing an author to object to any distortion, mutilation or derogatory action in relation to the work which would be “prejudicial to his honour or reputation”. Crucially, Moral Rights persist even after transfer of the copyright on a piece of work – they are inalienable.The inalienability of Moral Rights does not fit well with typical legal and philosophical approaches to explaining intellectual property rights. This paper suggests an alternative account of the justificatory basis of Moral Rights in copyright doctrine – one based on the principle of relational equality.