Prise de Parole Inc v Guérin, Éditeur Ltée
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Prise de Parole Inc. v. Guérin éditeur Ltée [1996] F.C.J. No. 1427[1] is a leading Canadian case on moral rights in copyright law. The Court found that the plaintiff's moral rights had not been violated because there was no subjective evidence that the reproduction caused harm to his reputation.
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[edit] Background
Guérin, éditeur Ltée was a publishing company that produced collections of stories for grade schools. One of their textbooks, "Libre expression", included unattributed segments from a previously published book called "La vengeance de l'original" by Doric Germain. All the rights to Germain's book had been assigned to Prise de Parole. Between 1981 and 1991 Prise de Parole sold about 1,000 copies of the book each year, but once Guerin published its collection, sales went down drastically.
As Germain's copyright had been assigned to Prise de Parole, Germain was only able to bring an action against Guerin for infringing his moral rights under section 28.2(1) of the Copyright Act.
Germain argued that by only reproducing parts of his work, Guerin had harmed the integrity of the original work and reprejudiced his honour.
[edit] Opinion of the Court
The Court noted that to establish an infringement under section 28.2, the claimant need only show that the work was distorted mutilated, or otherwise modified "to the prejudice of the author's honour or reputation" and that actual prejudice to reputation or honour need not be proven.
Following the decision of Snow v. The Eaton Centre Ltd., the Court noted that prejudice must first be determined on a sujbective standard based on the author's opinion. Second, it must also be determined on an objective standard that is based on public or expert opinion in order to establish that the author's opinion was reasonable. The evidence presented did not objectively show that there was any prejudice and there was no evidence of actual harm. The Court observed that Germain had "not been ridiculed or mocked by his colleagues or the newspapers and he had not personally heard any complaints after the [collection] was published."[2]
Despite there being no finding of prejudice, due to the conduct of the defendant, the Court awarded the plaintiff $10,000.
