The recent news

July 22, 2019

Publications

This working document serves as a basis for a contribution to the Grands Arrêts de la Propriété intellectuelle (major cases in Intellectual Property), published under the direction of Michel Vivant, in the new section devoted to Regulatory perspective.

Conceived as a "regulatory tool", intellectual property is then used by the State as an "incentive for innovation". Public authorities adopt solutions that stem from sectoral concerns that permeate intellectual property. Because the economic sectors become prime, the systemic perspective then prevails in the solutions retained in the judgments passed by the courts. 

 One can see it through three French court decisions: 

 

 Civ., 1ière, 28 février 2006, named Mulholland Drive ;

 Paris, 11 décembre 2012, Sanofi-Aventis ;

 Civ., 1ière, 6 juillet 2017, SFR, Orange, Free, Bouygues télécom et autres.

 

Summary:

Intellectual property, derived from the State and inserted in a public policy, can be conceived, not to reward a posteriori the creator but to incite others to innovate. It is then an Ex Ante tool of Regulation, alternative to subsidies. If private copying is an exception, it is not in relation to the principle of competition but in an insertion in a system of incentives, starting from the costs borne by the author of the first innovation: the owner of the rights is then protected , not only according to a balance of interests, but in order not to discourage innovative potentials and the sector itself. (1st decision).

The sectoral policy then pervades the intellectual property used to regulate a sector, for example that of the drug. While it is true that a laboratory wishing to market a generic medicine did not wait for the patent expiry of the original medicine to do so, it is not relevant to sanction this anticipation of a few days because investments made by the holder of the intellectual property right have been made profitable by it and because the public authorities favor generics for the sake of public health (2nd decision).

The systemic interest provides and that is why Internet service providers have to bear the costs of access blocking while they are irresponsible because of the texts. This obligation to pay is internalized by Compliance because they are in the digital system best able to put an end to the violation of intellectual property rights that the ecosystem requires to be effective. (3rd decision).

 

 

It is necessary to underline the paradox represented by the infatuation of the theoreticians of Regulation with intellectual property, whose legal nature it transforms by an exogenous reasoning(I). Influenced, the case law uses reasoning based on incentives, investments, returns and costs, so that the State obtains the operators expected behaviors (II). As a natural result, there is a sectoral segmentation, for example  in telecommunications or pharmacy, which ends up calling into question the uniqueness of intellectual property, according to the technologies and public policies that affect them  (III). There are still imputations of new obligations on operators just because they are in the technical position of implementing intellectual property rights: the transition from Regulation to Compliance is thus taking place (IV).

July 21, 2019

Interviews

Référence : Frison-Roche, M.-A., débat dirigé par Raphaël Bourgois, avec Philippe Herlin et Tristan Dissaux sur le thème : "Cryptomonnaies : qui a peur de Facebook ?", émission L'émission du week-end, France Culture, 21 juillet 2019. 

Ecouter le débat.

 

Raphaël Bourgeois présente la question en se référant à propos de "Libra" aux propos de Bruno Le Maire qui admet la perspective d'une cryptomonnaie mais exclut celle d'une "monnaie souveraine".

Après la définition de ce qu'est la "compliance" (MAFR) et la "cryptomonnaie (Philippe Herlin) et la "monnaie" dont la philosophie libertarienne changerait la nature.

Le mécanisme de régulation bancaire est explicité par MAFR, comme préservé de la faillite du système, ce qu'exclut la monnaie privée qui écarte cette perspective en affirmant que les machines, notamment les blockchains, sont "infaillibles", ce qui relève d'une pensée magique. 

Raphaël Bourgois interroge donc sur la question centrale de la "garantie".  La présentation faite par MAFR est contestée par Philippe Herlin qui affirme que le système public est faible et qu'il ne protège pas, alors que les systèmes privés seraient plus fiables... Mais Tristan Dissault rappelle que lorsque la crise est arrivée les Etats sont été présents et ont réglé la crise, et souligne que le Libra sera adossé à un panier de monnaies nationales. 

Philippe Herlin continue de contester cette présentation en affirmant que le système bancaire actuel ne pourrait pas rembourser en cas de demande massive, tandis qu'un tel remboursement pourrait être par le Libra. Cette affirmation est contestée par MAFR car c'est l'objet même du système complet de la régulation et de la supervision bancaire.

Raphaël Bourgois demande alors à Tristan Dissault qui garantit le mieux et véritalement l'intérêt général ? Un seul, l'Etat, ou plusieurs, notamment des opérateurs privés ? Celui-ci répond qu'on peut être réservé sur Facebook en raison des scandales concernant cette entreprise en matière de données personnelles. Il rappelle le courant économique qui promeut la concurrence. Pour l'instant, Facebook est plutôt seul, alors qu'il s'agit d'un bien public. Philippe Herlin fait remarquer que d'ores et déjà, il y a des concurrents privés qui sont en train de lancer leur lancement (Telegram ; Samsung) et il espère qu'un opérateur européen se lancera.  Il souligne que cela sera une opportunité pour le monde non-occidental.

Raphaël Bourgois revient sur le rapport rendu par Marie-Anne Frison-Roche au Gouvernement en juillet 2019 sur L'apport du Droit de la Compliance à la Gouvernance d'Internetet sa pertinence sur le sujet. Elle souligne que l'Europe a été par le Droit la première à protéger les personnes à travers leurs données personnelles, les contraintes que les autorités publiques exercent ainsi sur les opérateurs privés si puissants soient-ils, quand bien même ils sont étrangers, des tâches d'intérêt général, y compris via le Droit pénal. 

Parce que la puissance du Droit ne doit pas être crainte, de la même façon il ne faut pas avoir peur des entreprises par lesquelles ces buts d'intérêt général soient atteints (par exemple prêter à des personnes pauvres), et c'est pourquoi, si le Droit de la Compliance internalise ces buts et organise la supervision des entreprises comme Facebook, y compris dans ces nouvelles entreprises, on doit se réjouir de ces nouvelles activités.

________

July 18, 2019

Interviews

Référence complète : interview à propos du rapport reçu par le Gouvernement le 15 juillet 2019  : Frison-Roche, M.-A., "Gouvernance d'Internet : nous sommes face à un enjeu de civilisation", Petites affiches, 18 juillet 2019, entretien mené avec Olivia Dufour. 

 

Résumé de l'interview : 

"Dans le rapport qu’elle a remis au secrétaire d’État au numérique en juillet, Marie-Anne Frison-Roche émet 55 propositions visant à élaborer une gouvernance d’internet fondée sur la compliance. Il s’agit en pratique pour le politique de définir des buts monumentaux : par exemple la lutte contre le réchauffement climatique et de les internaliser dans les acteurs cruciaux, par exemple Facebook ou Google sous le contrôle d’un superviseur. Ainsi Facebook serait-il appelé à surveiller les échanges numériques de la même façon qu’aujourd’hui Euronext surveille les échanges financiers. Au-delà de la question cruciale de la régulation du numérique, l’ambition consiste pour l’Europe à être fidèle à sa tradition humaniste en imposant par le droit la protection de la personne.".

 

Lire l'interview.

Se reporter au Rapport de Marie-Anne Frison-Roche, L'apport du Droit de la Compliance dans la Gouvernance d'Internet, à propos duquel l'interview a été donné. 

July 15, 2019

Publications

July 15, 2019

Publications

July 11, 2019

None

This is a new course for students in the last part of the curriculum in the School of Public Affairs at Sciences po (Paris), having a certain knowledge in public policy and economics, even but not necessarily in Law. 

It is given in French.

Some students have followed the course of Droit commun de la Régulation Common (General Regulatory Law - first semester), even the course of Droits sectoriels de la Régulation (Sectorial Regulatory Law), but that does not constitute a pre-requisite, but it is rather to follow the legal news from an economic angle.  Law is therefore given by the news itself and by the professor, the student having to have some knowledge in economics and public policies to benefit from it.

The course is entirely made by Professor Marie-Anne Frison-Roche, students being invited to intervene when they wish, during the presentation of the legal news, apprehended from the economic and public policy angle.

 

See below for more details of this course. 

July 6, 2019

Law by Illustrations

Jean de La Fontaine écrivit une fable, dont le titre : Le Berger et le Roi

En voilà le texte. 

Deux démons à leur gré partagent notre vie,
Et de son patrimoine ont chassé la raison.
Je ne vois point de cœur qui ne leur sacrifie.
Si vous me demandez leur état et leur nom,
J'appelle l'un Amour, et l'autre Ambition.
Cette dernière étend le plus loin son empire ;
Car même elle entre dans l'amour.

Je le ferais bien voir ; mais mon but est de dire
Comme un Roi fit venir un Berger à sa Cour.
Le conte est du bon temps , non du siècle où nous sommes.
Ce Roi vit un troupeau qui couvrait tous les champs,
Bien broutant, en bon corps, rapportant tous les ans,
Grâce aux soins du Berger, de très notables sommes.

Le Berger plut au Roi par ces soins diligents.
Tu mérites, dit-il, d'être pasteur de gens ;
Laisse là tes moutons, viens conduire des hommes.
Je te fais Juge souverain.
Voilà notre berger la balance à la main.
Quoiqu'il n'eût guère vu d'autres gens qu'un ermite,
Son troupeau, ses mâtins, le loup, et puis c'est tout
,
Il avait du bon sens ; le reste vient ensuite.
Bref, il en vint fort bien à bout.

L'Ermite son voisin accourut pour lui dire :
Veillé-je ? et n'est-ce point un songe que je vois ?
Vous favori ! vous grand ! Défiez-vous des Rois :
Leur faveur est glissante, on s'y trompe ; et le pire
C'est qu'il en coûte cher ; de pareilles erreurs
Ne produisent jamais que d'illustres malheurs.
Vous ne connaissez pas l'attrait qui vous engage.
Je vous parle en ami. Craignez tout. L'autre rit,
Et notre ermite poursuivit :
Voyez combien déjà la Cour vous rend peu sage.
Je crois voir cet aveugle à qui dans un voyage
Un serpent engourdi de froid
Vint s'offrir sous la main : il le prit pour un fouet.
Le sien s'était perdu, tombant de sa ceinture.
Il rendait grâce au ciel de l'heureuse aventure,
Quand un passant cria : Que tenez-vous, ô Dieux !
Jetez cet animal traître et pernicieux,
Ce serpent. C'est un fouet . C'est un serpent, vous dis-je.
A me tant tourmenter quel intérêt m'oblige ?
Prétendez-vous garder ce trésor ? Pourquoi non ?
Mon fouet était usé ; j'en retrouve un fort bon ;
Vous n'en parlez que par envie.
L'aveugle enfin ne le crut pas ;
Il en perdit bientôt la vie.
L'animal dégourdi piqua son homme au bras.
Quant à vous, j'ose vous prédire
Qu'il vous arrivera quelque chose de pire.
Eh ! que me saurait-il arriver que la mort ?
Mille dégoûts viendront, dit le Prophète Ermite.
Il en vint en effet ; l'Ermite n'eut pas tort.
Mainte peste de Cour fit tant, par maint ressort,
Que la candeur du juge, ainsi que son mérite,
Furent suspects au prince. On cabale, on suscite
Accusateurs et gens grevés par ses arrêts.

De nos biens, dirent-ils, il s'est fait un palais.
Le prince voulut voir ces richesses immenses ;
Il ne trouva partout que médiocrité,
Louanges du désert et de la pauvreté ;
C'étaient là ses magnificences.
Son fait, dit-on, consiste en des pierres de prix.
Un grand coffre en est plein, fermé de dix serrures.
Lui-même ouvrit ce coffre, et rendit bien surpris
Tous les machineurs d'impostures.
Le coffre étant ouvert, on y vit des lambeaux,
L'habit d'un gardeur de troupeaux,
Petit chapeau, jupon, panetière, houlette,
Et je pense aussi sa musette.
Doux trésors, ce dit-il, chers gages qui jamais
N'attirâtes sur vous l'envie et le mensonge,

Je vous reprends ; sortons de ces riches palais
Comme l'on sortirait d'un songe.

Sire, pardonnez-moi cette exclamation.
J'avais prévu ma chute en montant sur le faîte.
Je m'y suis trop complu
; mais qui n'a dans la tête
Un petit grain d'ambition ?

 

Lire ci-après l'exégèse et l'analyse de la fable

Updated: July 4, 2019 (Initial publication: April 30, 2019)

Publications

  Complete reference : Frison-Roche, M.-A., Having a good behavior in the digital space, working paper, April 2019.

____

📝  This working document serves as a basis for a contribution to the collective book dedicated to Professor Michel Vivant, article written en French.

 

Summary: The jurist sees the world through the way he learns to speak!footnote-1536, legal vocabulary build by Law itself, whether in common law or in civil law. Thus, we think we are dealing with the human being who does not move, taken by the legal notion expressed by the term "person", their body and their biological development in time, from the birth to the death, holding entirely in this hollow of that word "person", while the behavior of the human being with regard to the world, others and things, are grouped in other branches of Law: the Contract and Tort Law and the Property Law, which are only what people do with and about things.

The Law of the Environment has already come to blur this distinction, so finally so strange because this classical conception refers to a person taken firstly in his immobility (Law of individuals), and then in his only actions (Contrats and Tort Law, Property Law). Indeed, the very notion of "environment" implies that the person is not isolated, that he/she is "surrounded", that he/she is what he/she is and will become because of what surrounds him/her ; in return the world is permanently affected by his/her personal action. On second thought, when once "Law of Individuals" was not distinguished from Family Law, the human being was more fully restored by this division in the legal system that not only followed him/her from birth to death but also in him/her most valuable interactions: parents, siblings, couples, children. Thus Family Law was finer and more faithful to what is the life of a human being.

To have instituted Law of Individuals, it is thus to have promoted of the human being a vision certainly more concrete, because it is above all of their identity and their body about what Law speaks, astonishing that we have not noticed before that women are not men like the others. To have instituted the Law of the people, it is thus to have promoted of the human being a vision certainly more concrete, because it is above all of his identity and his body that one speaks to us, astonishing that the we have not noticed before that women are not men like the others!footnote-1537 without however remembering that abstraction is sometimes the best of protections!footnote-1538.  But it is also to have isolated human beings, split from what they do, what they touch, what they say to others. It is by taking legally a static perception of a "man without relationship". We have gone from the legal individualism of the Law of the sole man.

From this concrete vision, we have all the benefits but Law, much more than in the eighteenth century, perceives the human being as an isolated subject, whose corporeality ceases to be veiled by Law!footnote-1570, but for whom the relation to others or to things does not define him or her. Which brings the human being a lot closer to things. An human being who is a legal subject who does what they wants, as they can, limited by the force of things. But in fact things are so powerful and the human being, in fact, so weak. For example, the marks people leave are erased by time. Their grip on the world stops at the extent of their knowledge, the time and money they have, building to use better their own time and to reach projects that they designed, In this conception, Person and Liberty are one, returning the subject to their solitude.

This freedom will come into conflict with the need for order, expressed by society, social contract, state, law, which imposes limits on freedom of one to preserve freedom of the other, as recalled by the French Déclaration des Droits de l'Homme  of 1789. Thus, it is not possible de jure to transform every desire in action,, even though the means would be within reach of the person in question, because certain behaviors are prohibited in that they would cause too much disorder and if they are nevertheless committed, they are punished for order to return. Thus, what could be called "law of behavior", obligations to do and not to be put in criminal, civil and administrative Law, national and international Law, substantial Law and procedural Law :they will protect the human being in movment pushed by the principle of freedom forward others and thing, movement inherent in their status as a Person. 

The human being is therefore limited in what they want to do. In the first place by the fact: their exhausting forces, their death that will come, the time counted, the money that is lacking, the knowledge that they does not even know not holding, all that is to say by their very humanity; Secondly, by the Law which forbids so many actions ...: not to kill, not to steal, not to take the spouse of others, not to pass as true what is false, etc. For the human being on the move, full of life and projects, Law has always had a "rabat-joy" side. It is for that reason often ridiculous and criticized because of all its restraining regulations, even hated or feared in that it would prevent to live according to our desire, which is always my "good pleasure", good since it is mine. Isolated and all-powerful, the human being alone not wanting to consider other than its desire alone.

Psychoanalysis, however, has shown that Law, in that it sets limits, assigns to the human being a place and a way of being held with respect to things and other persons. If one no longer stands themselves by the prohibition of the satisfaction of all desire (the first of which is the death of the other), social life is no longer possible!footnote-1571. Thank to the Law, everyone follows the same Rule at the table, from which a discussion can take place between guests and without which it can not!footnote-1539. You stand straight in your chair, you do not eat with your fingers, you do not speak with your mouth full, you do not interrupt the speaker. Admittedly, one often learns at the beginning of the learning of the Law that one should not confuse "politeness" and Law. That these rules are politeness and that this is not Law ...

But this presentation aims to make it possible to admit that the criterion of Law would be in the effectiveness of a sanction by the public power: the fine, the prison, the confiscation of a good, which the rudeness does not trigger whereas Law would imply it: by this way we are thus persuaded of the intimacy between the public power (the State) and Law... But later, after this first lesson learned, the doubt comes from the consubstansuality between Law and State. Is it not rather appropriate to consider that Law is what must lead everyone to "behave well" with regard to things and people around them? The question of punishment is important, but it is second, it is not the very definition of Law. The French author Carbonnier pointed out that the gendarme's "kepi" is the "Law sign", that is to say what it is recognized without hesitation, but it is not its definition.

The first issue dealt with by Law is then not so much the freedom of the person as the presence of others. How to use one's freedom and the associated deployment of forces in the presence of others? How could I not using it when I would like to harm them, or if the nuisance created for them by the use of my free strength is indifferent to me!footnote-1540 How can Law lead me to use my means for their benefit while our interests do not converge? 

We do not use our force against others because we have interest or desire, we do not give him the support of our strength while he indifferent us, because Law holds us. If the superego was not enough. If Law and the "parental function of the States" did not make alliance. We do it because we hold ourselves

Or rather we were holding ourselves.

Because today a new world has appeared: the digital world that allows everyone not to "hold" himself, that is to say to constantly abuse others, never to take them into consideration, to attack massively. It's a new experience. It is not a pathological phenomenon, as is delinquency (which simply leads to punishment), nor a structural failure in a principle otherwise admitted (which leads to regulatory remedies) but rather a new use, which would be a new rule: in the digital space, one can do anything to everyone, one is not held by anything or anyone, one can "let go" (I). This lack of "good behavior" is incompatible with the idea of ​​Law, in that Law is made for human beings and protect those who can not afford to protect themselves; that is why this general situation must be remedied  (II).