Deckmyn

Key takeaways

A Belgian politician had handed out a calendar whose cover reworked a famous comic book cover to convey a political message. The author's heirs sued.

The Court of Justice held that parody has the same meaning throughout the Union. Two conditions are enough: the parody must evoke an existing work while being noticeably different from it, and it must be an expression of humour or mockery. It does not need to be original itself, nor to target the parodied work.

The court must still strike a fair balance between the author's rights and freedom of expression. If the parody conveys a discriminatory message, the right holders have a legitimate interest in not being associated with it.

The ruling interprets Article 5(3)(k) of Directive 2001/29, which France transposed in Article L. 122-5, 4° of the Intellectual Property Code. The “rules of the genre” referred to in the French text must now be read in the light of this European definition.

For video games, the decision is relevant to humorous mods, machinimas and reworked characters. It also recalls a limit: reusing a work as it stands, with no perceptible distance and no intention to amuse or mock, is not parody. For borrowings without humour, the place to look is pastiche, redefined by Pelham II in 2026.