The French courts on Friday dismissed the claims of Maurice Ravel and Russian decorator Alexandre Benois, who had asked the Society of Authors, Composers and Music Publishers (Sacem) to recognise the latter as co-author of the famous “Boléro”.
The Nanterre court, near Paris, “rejected the claims of the rights holders of Maurice Ravel and Alexandre Benois concerning Boléro, one of the most performed and broadcast works in the world,” the court said in a statement. The work “therefore remains in the public domain,” it added.
Regarding the hypothesis of Mr. Benois’ co-authorship, the court considered that “the documents provided did not demonstrate his status as author of the argument (short summary, editor’s note) of the ballet.”
The thesis of another aggrieved co-author, the choreographer Bronislava Nijinska, was also dismissed by this judgment, the artist having “never appeared in the documentation of ‘Boléro’ as a co-author”.
“It is a very well-argued decision, which took care to examine all the elements brought to the attention of the court and which validates Sacem both in its approach (…) and in its position regarding of safeguarding the interests of its members”, reacted to AFP Me Yvan Diringer, one of the lawyers of Sacem, the organization which manages and collects copyright in France.
“The action of the estates and publishers (also parties to the case, editor’s note) has been rejected by the court, we are calmly analyzing the decision before responding to the press,” Gilles Vercken, lawyer for the Ravel estate, told AFP.
Domaine public
Maurice Ravel’s heiress, Evelyne Pen de Castel, is also ordered to pay one euro to Sacem “in compensation for her loss resulting from the abuse of the author’s moral rights”, the decision states.
This judgment ensures that at this stage, the “Boléro” remains in the public domain as it has been since 2016.
For Sacem to recognize Mr. Benois as co-author would have had the effect of protecting the work until May 1, 2039, Mr. Benois having died in 1960.
In France, copyright on a musical composition lasts for the lifetime of its author and then for the following seventy years. It then falls into the public domain and can be used freely.
The “Boléro” was protected for seventy-eight years and four months, because the law provides for extensions which aim to compensate for the loss of income of French artists during the two World Wars, which carried the protection until May 1, 2016 .
If the rights generated represented “for a time millions and millions of euros” annually, according to the information provided to AFP in February by Me Josée-Anne Bénazéraf, the amounts have only reached an average of 135′ 507 euros per year between 2011 and 2016.
This article was published automatically. Sources: ats / afp
