Revenge porn: …still no IP rights in sight
Revenge porn is sometimes mentioned in textbooks and commentary as the typical case of private production gone wrong, for which IP rights would prove useful not so much for incentivising the commercial dissemination of the ‘work’ but, rather, for its taking down. Such a scenario would certainly make for an interesting IP case, testing the application of copyright or performers’ rights, or at least serve as the basis of a cheeky examination question, no pun intended. The Paris Tribunal recently decided one such case of ‘revenge porn’. At the risk of disappointing readers, there were no IP rights in sight in the dispute, the entire case having been (successfully) pled on the ground of the right to privacy. In a decision dated 20 November 2018 , the Paris Tribunal decided that a former mistress, who had leaked text messages and erotic photographs of the claimant to his wife and his sister, had breached his right to privacy guaranteed by Article 9 of the French Civil Co...