Regarding Copyright: Is a Scent Like a Song?

In its ruling, the court, the Cour de Cassation, denied the petition of a perfume maker, who claimed she deserved to continue receiving royalties from a former employer, even after she had been fired. The court stated, "The fragrance of a perfume, which results from the simple implementation of expertise" does not constitute "the creation of a form of expression able to profit from protection of works of the mind."

To confuse matters, a French court of appeals ruled the opposite last January, determining that a perfume could be a "work of the mind" protected by intellectual property law. It ordered a Belgian company to pay damages to the perfume and cosmetics giant L'Oréal, which sued it for producing counterfeits of best-selling L'Oréal perfumes.

The rulings have the noses and the perfume houses of France twitching nervously. Many "noses" consider the scents they create as important and valuable as paintings or poems.

Read the rest of the article, originally published by the NYTimes.

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