Scenes à faire
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Scenes à faire (French for "scenes to be made") is a principle in copyright law in which certain elements of a creative work are held to be not protected when they are mandated by or customary to the genre.
For example, a spy novel is expected to contain elements such as numbered Swiss bank accounts, a femme fatale, and various spy gadgets hidden in wristwatches, belts, shoes, and other personal effects. These elements are not protected by copyright, though specific sequences and compositions of them can be.
One of the significant cases in United States law was Ets-Hokin v. Skyy Spirits (2003), in which scenes à faire was upheld as an affirmative defense by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. The case involved a commercial photographer, Joshua Ets-Hokin, who sued SKYY vodka when another photographer created advertisements with a substantially similar appearance to work he had done for them in the past.
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