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Granting of the CEIPI / VERCKEN & GAULLIER doctoral thesis award

Doctoral thesis award

09/2020

Granting of the CEIPI / VERCKEN & GAULLIER doctoral thesis award

For the first edition of the doctoral thesis award of CEIPI / VERCKEN & GAULLIER, the award was granted to the following thesis:

 

"Awareness and creation in Copyright Law"

Noémie Enser

 

 

 

"At the time when the questions pertaining to the human, moral and psychological consciousness are raised (again) with a particular acuteness in light of the developments of the "artificial intelligence" and the return of the morality in our societies, the doctoral thesis of Noémie Enser is particularly relevant and cutting edge.

The moral conscience has a role to play in Copyright Law and the awareness in the creation is at the centre of the concept itself of copyright".

Florence Gaullier & Gilles Vercken

Psychological awareness is the ability of human beings to understand their own existence and the world around them. It has a natural, sometimes conflictual, but inescapable relationship with the law. This explains the number of studies devoted to the links between the law, or certain special rights, and psychological awareness. Copyright, which protects the creator&"39;s rights over his work, is no exception to the rule, and psychological awareness plays a definite role in it, which until now has never been the subject of systematic study.

 

However, conscience undoubtedly plays a role in copyright law, but a role that is far from clear and which, above all, appears to require a minimum amount of re-reading.

 

The majority doctrine requires in the first place that the author of a work of the mind be endowed with discernment, which should lead to the exclusion from protection of the creations of very young children, as well as those of persons whose discernment is abolished or simply altered. Secondly, the author should also be animated by a will to create, which this time excludes authors without creative intent. Finally, some members of the doctrine go even further, demanding an awareness of the result to be achieved, a mastery of the creative process, which this time disqualifies "accidental" creations, those that do not stem from a preconceived image in the author&"39;s consciousness, but are more the fruit of chance. Thus, the requirement of an author&"39;s conscience is actively manifested in copyright law, since it conditions access to protection, and has a number of variations.

 

The thesis tends to show that these three requirements, all of which have no legal basis, are irrelevant, particularly since they all relate to the creative process, which should be indifferent in copyright law. The author&"39;s discernment, his will to create or his control over creation should not condition the existence or, to a lesser extent, the exercise of rights: only the existence of a human author counts.

 

The search for an awareness of creation should then allow only one exclusion from protection: that of non-human creations.

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