In a decision dated March 6th 2015, the French Administrative Supreme Court (Conseil d’Etat) ruled that disputes opposing an author and a department and resulting from a public contract fall under the exclusive jurisdiction of the civil courts, pursuant to article L. 331-1 of the French intellectual property code.

In this instance, the author signed a contract of transfer of photograph reproduction and distribution rights. At the end of the contract, the author wished to retrieve the CD, on which said photographs were stored. Therefore, considering the transfer of rights contract to be a public one, he filed his claim before an administrative court.

After the Nancy administrative court and the administrative court of appeal rejected his claim, he filed an appeal before the Conseil d’Etat.

In its decision, the Conseil d’Etat specified that by way of derogation to the principles on responsibility of public bodies and to article 2 the Act of December 11th 2001 introducing urgent economic and financial reforms, according to which public contracts are deemed to be administrative contracts so that any dispute arising from them are subject to the jurisdiction of the administrative courts, the exclusive competence of the court of general jurisdiction (Tribunaux de grande instance) in matters of literary and artistic property rights is also applicable to an administrative contract if the latter governs such rights.

Thus, the Conseil d’Etat cancelled both rulings for error in law pursuant to the lack of jurisdiction of administrative courts in disputes on literary and artistic property rights.

As a result, disputes on literary and artistic rights are subjected to civil courts even when they arise from an administrative contract.