The Ninth Circuit reversed a lower court’s decision in an action seeking recognition of a French money judgment for copyright infringement involving photographs of Pablo Picasso’s artworks. The lower court found that the French money judgment was not enforceable due to fair use. The Ninth Circuit found that various factors weighed against the fair use defense and remanded to the lower court.
Christian Zervos, Picasso’s friend, took almost 16,000 photographs of the painter’s artworks between 1932 and 1970. Cahiers d’Art published the photographs in a catalog known as the Zervos Catalogue, and Yves Sicre de Fontbrune acquired intellectual property rights to the Zervos Catalogue under French law in 1979. In 1991, Alan Wofsy, an American art editor, acquired permission from Picasso’s estate to publish The Picasso Project, which included republication of photographs that were published in the Zervos Catalogue. In 1996, Sicre de Fontbrune requested that the police seize two copies of The Picasso Project, which were being sold at a Paris book fair, and proceeded to sue Wofsy for copyright infringement.
A French court initially rejected the 1996 claim, but the French Court of Appeal reversed and found that Wofsy had infringed on Sicre de Fontbrune’s copyright rights, determining that the photographs at issue did not merely copy Picasso’s works but also added creative features through “deliberate choice[s] of lighting, the…
