File:Victor Lanoux, 1962, Studio Harcourt.jpg

{{subst:delete2|image=Files in Category:Photographs by Studio Harcourt|reason=The Studio Harcourt photographs have been discussed numerous times. The lengthiest discussions were probably those this year, 2024, a few months ago at Commons:Village pump/copyright. See Commons:Village pump/Copyright/Archive/2024/07#Copyright status of photos by French photo studio Harcourt and Commons:Village pump/Copyright/Archive/2024/09#Studio Harcourt (PD before 1992). These discussions were rather thorough, and the outcome was that the majority of the Studio Harcourt photos Wikimedia Commons is hosting today are not under a free license, and they are also not in the public domain in the United States or not in the public domain in both France and the United States.

A short recap (details at the COM:VPC links above): Studio Harcourt was a photo studio founded in Paris in 1934. The studio soon gained prominence as a "celebrity" studio, which means many of its photos are of notable people and interesting for Commons. Studio Harcourt ran into economic difficulties and had to sell some of its assets, including some 5 million photos and the economic rights (copyrights, or patrimonial rights in France) to those photos. These photos and the rights were acquired by the French state in 1989/1991, directly or from third parties (there were at least two batches). User:Günther Frager found a 2003 French court case, Studio Harcourt vs Mélodie (Tribunal de grande instance de Paris, 4 février 2003, 2001/17786), which confirmed that the French state owned those rights at least in 2003. And indeed, on various websites offering the photos the French state claims a copyright for them to this day.

The original Studio Harcourt was liquidated (even if User:Tisourcier insists that this is not the case because some photo historian wrote it in a book, the court case clearly indicates the liquidation happened). The Studio Harcourt brand name and logo was sold in an auction and acquired by others. These others then opened a new photo studio under the traditional Harcourt name. There were several name changes, see the VPC archives for details. This "new" Studio Harcourt was one of the two parties involved in the 2003 court decision cited above. It also, as User:Studio Harcourt, uploaded 100 newer photos to Wikimedia Commons in 2010 (these 100 files are not nominated for deletion with this deletion request). Finally, the "new" Studio Harcourt was also a party involved in another court decision from 2014, which decided that in France, photos from Studio Harcourt are collective works, giving them a copyright of 70 years from creation/publication (and not 70 years after the photographer's death which would be the norm in France).

So accd. to the 2014 court decision, as of 2024, all Studio Harcourt photos from 1953 or older are in the public domain in France. Since France had a copyright term of 58 years and 120 days on its URAA date (January 1, 1996), all Studio Harcourt photos from before 1937 should also be in the public domain in the US, because their US copyrights were not restored by the URAA. Any more recent photos are however still protected in the US by the usual 95 year term.

Which means this deletion request nominates Studio Harcourt photos from 1937 or newer. We will be able to undelete those after 95 + 1 years, so those from 1937 in 2033, from 1938 in 2034 etc. I'll add notes to those files which don't have a year (or a wrong year) in the file name.

During the COM:VPC discussions and before, a number of arguments came up claiming that these files were released under a free license or into the public domain, by the French state or by the "new" Studio Harcourt:

• RAN claimed that the French state released them either under a CC license or into the public domain, but never came up with any proper evidence for those claims.
• A VRT ticket ticket:2020112910005534 from the "new" Studio Harcourt has a statement from a woman named Agnes Brouard working for Studio Harcourt Paris and Chargée de la valorisation des collections, which basically claims that there are no patrimonial rights for all older Harcourt, which is saying that they are in the public domain. Some users, like User:Tisourcier (who uploaded many Harcourt photos) and User:Yann, think that is enough, that we should just rely on that statement and declare the photos to be in the public domain.
  However, that contradicts the 2003 court case which found that the French state owned those rights. Even if the state had released them into the public domain since then, there is no statement whatsoever to that effect, on the contrary, the state routinely still claims a copyright for the photos.
  As User:D. Benjamin Miller pointed out in the second COM:VPC discussion, 1) once the copyright had been transferred to the state, anything the "new" Studio Harcourt or one of its employees says is legally irrelevant, 2) the French government seems unlikely to have dedicated the copyrights to the public domain (it is, among other things, inconsistent with their copyright claims and their business of selling the photos online), and 3) the purpose of the VRT is to collect proof of permission from the copyright holder, not commentary from third parties (like the "new" Studio Harcourt).
  As he puts it, "In short, these images are clearly not naturally in the public domain. We haven't seen any evidence of them having been dedicated to the public domain (as opposed to Brouard's hearsay), and all indications from state sources seem to indicdate that such a dedication is, at best, extremely unlikely. Especially in light of the active and explicit claims by the owner (as identified by a court in a lawsuit), we can't accept hearsay like Brouard's as evidence of a permission grant.
  That's how I see it too; that VRT statement by a third party is not in any way an acceptable permission.}} ~~~~