"However terrible life may be, the existence of creative activity with no other purpose than itself is enough to justify it. Play, of course, seems at first glance to be the least useful of our activities, but it becomes the most useful as soon as we realize that it increases our zest for life and makes us forget death."
Elie Faure, The Spirit of Forms, Volume II, Pauvert
"Without culture, and the relative freedom it implies, even the most perfect society is nothing but a jungle. That is why every authentic creation is a gift to the future."
Albert Camus, Actuelles II, L’artiste et son temps, Gallimard
This Master's program is designed for anyone who is passionate about creation and communication and who wants to understand the legal issues and mechanisms involved.
It is the act of creation, as well as the fruit of that act, that are at the heart of the issues addressed in the Master's program in Intellectual Property and Digital Law.
The subject matter of the law is intellectual creation , and the mechanisms for understanding it are those of intellectual property law, which is designed as a special law that nevertheless interacts with the principles of common law (liability law, special contract law, property law, etc.).
It is creation that matters, whether classic or new types of creation: transformative creations, musical or olfactory trademarks, plant varieties, commercial "tricks," etc. – creation faced with contemporary questions and challenges: online dissemination of hateful content, illegal downloading, filtering and net neutrality, collaborative platforms,open data,open innovation, open source, etc.
Download the Master's brochure:
Cross-cutting
The teaching approach is therefore cross-disciplinary and covers all areas of intellectual property.
The following topics are covered:
- copyright,
- the rights of performers,
- design law,
- patent law,
- trademark law,
- plant variety rights,
- and finally database rights.
This approach is linked to a practical reality that shows that a legal situation is rarely confined to one area of intellectual property.
There are necessary overlaps that require specialist lawyers to have a thorough understanding of how the various mechanisms interact. For example, it would be inconceivable to consider analyzing a case relating to design or ready-to-wear clothing without also taking into account copyright, design law, and trademark law.
Digitization
The training philosophy is also comprehensive in this era of dematerialization of media: for example, genetic resources are just as much as museum works intended to be integrated into digital databases that can then be circulated via communication networks...
Intellectual property law is therefore now necessarily and closely linked to information and communication technology (ICT) law or digital law. The various projects involving digital libraries or the dissemination of scientific information in open science are concrete and current examples of this.
Beyond that, the dissemination of information is also attracting attention, both in terms of its implications for liability (particularly for technical service providers) and with regard to the protection of personal data.
Ubiquity
Finally, as an intangible object, intellectual creation has a ubiquitous dimension, reinforcedby the digital revolution, which complicates the application of national (or territorial) rules and therefore requires knowledge of the rules of public and private international law.
Specialist lawyers are therefore also confronted with the international dimension of intellectual property and must, in particular, have a thorough understanding of European Union sources.
- Is the online counterfeiting of a trademark via an online sales site or e-commerce platform accessible from France governed by French law or by another jurisdiction?
- Which court has jurisdiction when the offense is committed in multiple locations?
All these issues justify the fact that the training program places significant emphasis on both international law and procedural law specific to intellectual property law, which it does.
