Image rights and copyright on social media: reposting on Instagram can be sanctioned.

Reposting other people's content has become a reflex. A community manager spots a flattering video, finds it useful for his brand, downloads it and reposts it. The operation looks harmless, almost encouraged by the social-media ecosystem, whose economy rests on the viral circulation of content. It nonetheless remains, in many cases, a legally qualified act that engages the liability of whoever performs it. A judgment of the Paris Court, handed down on 5 June 2026 (3rd Chamber, 2nd Section, 5 June 2026, no. 23/10745), offers a clear and, above all, instructive illustration for practitioners.

The interest of the decision does not lie in any doctrinal innovation, but in the clarity with which it articulates two grounds that are often confused, image rights and copyright, and in the line it draws, in the negative, between two ways of reposting content. That line, technical as much as legal, separates sharing performed through a platform's native tools from extraction followed by modification of the content. It is the line that creators, brands and agencies must keep in mind.

When a video featuring a person circulates on a social network, at least three orders of rights overlap, and they must be carefully distinguished before any reasoning begins.

The first is image rights, an attribute of private life enshrined in Article 9 of the French Civil Code and Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. It belongs to the person represented, here the filmed athlete, regardless of any consideration of authorship.

The second is copyright in the video itself, as a work of the mind. It belongs to the author, or to the company that designed, financed and commissioned the work and obtained an assignment of the economic rights. This rights-holder is not necessarily the person filmed. The confusion is frequent, and the decision invites us not to make it: the athlete is the subject of the video, but it is the production company that holds the copyright.

The third, more discreet but decisive in practice, is the contractual layer of the platform's terms of service. By publishing content on a network, the user accepts stipulations that organise, to a certain extent, the resharing of that content by other accounts through the service's internal features. This acceptance, as we shall see, does not cover everything, but it is not neutral.

Confusing these three layers leads to the most common errors, for example believing that a like on a publication amounts to authorisation, or that a public figure has waived his image rights merely because he voluntarily exposes himself online. The decision under review allows us to put each thing back in its place.

A production company had made a video featuring an international footballer in training, originally broadcast on the player's own accounts. A US-law company that markets sports training equipment reposted a shortened version on its own networks. It was not content with mere sharing: it downloaded the video, shortened it, added its logo and changed the music, before rebroadcasting it for promotional purposes.

Two claimants brought proceedings: the footballer, on the basis of infringement of his personality rights, and the production company, on the basis of copyright infringement. The defendant resisted by alleging implied consent and contesting the originality of the video, while also disputing the territorial jurisdiction of the court and the scope of recoverable damages.

The court upheld the claims in part. It recognised both the infringement of image rights and the copyright infringement, but the compensation awarded, as we shall see, holds some interesting surprises.

Three layers of rights overlap: the image rights of the person filmed, the producer's copyright and the platform's terms of service.

The principle is settled: exploiting a person's image presupposes his authorisation, and any unauthorised capture or broadcast engages the liability of whoever performs it, regardless of how the medium was acquired or commercialised.

That authorisation is not an abstract formality. It must be express, specific and limited.

Concretely, the authorisation must define the scope of the consented exploitation: its duration, its territory, the broadcast media and its destination, that is, the commercial, advertising or institutional purpose of the use. Failing such delimitation, consent is vitiated. It follows that a brand cannot rely on a global, implicit agreement: associating a person with a product typically falls within the advertising destination, the most strictly regulated of all.

In the case at hand, no such authorisation existed. The brand had associated the athlete's image and name with its products, profiting from his notoriety, without the slightest agreement. The infringement of image rights was therefore established. The solution is not surprising; it confirms a firm line that the digital environment does not dilute. The fact that an image circulates on social networks does not make the person represented a royalty-free resource.

It is here that the decision takes on its full practical scope, by contrast. For everything turned on the manner of reposting.

What the court sanctions is a precise behaviour: extracting the video from its original context, modifying it, then reintegrating it into its own communication for promotional purposes. That behaviour far exceeds what the ordinary circulation of content on a social network authorises. To be lawful, it requires an express written authorisation, both as regards image rights and as regards copyright.

Yet there is another way to repost, which the decision does not sanction and which must be carefully distinguished: sharing performed through the platform's native tools. When the user publishes content on a network, he accepts terms of service that organise the resharing of that content between accounts, through the service's internal features. Sharing through the dedicated button, or reposting through a built-in repost feature, falls within that consented framework.

Here we must guard against a reading that is too comfortable, and apply a nuanced reasoning. The fact that native sharing is in principle lawful does not mean the decision so held. The court rules only on the case of modified extraction; the lawfulness of native sharing falls within doctrine and the analysis of the applicable terms of service, not within the operative part.

That lawfulness also remains conditional. It assumes compliance with the stipulations specific to each platform, which evolve, and does not necessarily exhaust every scenario, in particular when a brand seeks to derive a substantial commercial benefit from the association so created. Caution therefore requires presenting this tolerance as likely and framed, not as an absolute guarantee.

The practical rule remains nonetheless clear, and it is the one to remember. Sharing content through the network's tools falls, in principle, within the framework consented through the terms of service. Downloading it to cut it, edit it and reintegrate it into one's own communication leaves that framework, and requires a written agreement. Between the two seemingly close gestures runs the boundary of unlawfulness.

On the image-rights ground, compensation is awarded, but it is modest. The court allocates 7,000 euros for patrimonial damage and 1,000 euros for moral damage, where the claimant had sought far higher sums.

Several factors justify that moderation: the limited diffusion of the impugned publications, only twenty-one likes on the second, and above all the finding that the association of the athlete with the product already appeared in the video itself, where the branded equipment was visible, and in the repost made by the player's physical trainer, which the player had approved. The added value of the infringement imputable to the brand was reduced accordingly.

The court finally grants the prohibition of any reproduction and broadcast of the video, under a penalty of 500 euros per infringement, capped at 10,000 euros, after a ten-day period from service of the judgment. The production company is therefore not entirely sent away empty-handed: while it obtains nothing on the copyright ground, it obtains the cessation of the broadcast.

Sharing with the network's tools stays within the accepted framework. Downloading, editing and republishing in your own communications requires a written agreement.

From this decision, we can draw concrete recommendations, useful both for rights-holders and for actors tempted to reuse the content of others.

For brands, agencies and community managers, the golden rule lies in a distinction of gestures. Sharing content through the network's native tools falls, subject to the applicable terms of service, within a framework that is in principle consented. Downloading that content to cut it, edit it, add a logo or integrate it into a campaign leaves that framework radically, and calls for a written, separate agreement covering both the image rights of the persons represented and the copyright of the rights-holder of the work. Clipping and content remixes, which have become a standard practice of brand communication, are not covered by a like, an emoji, or the mere notoriety of the person reused.

For creators and production companies, the decision recalls that the ownership of rights must be clarified upstream. The person filmed holds his image rights; the author or the production company holds the copyright. Both can bring proceedings, but on different grounds and under different compensation regimes.

The decision also recalls, and this is the most precious warning, that a poorly documented copyright action may fail at the compensation stage. It is necessary to gather, from the outset, evidence of the scale and location of the disputed diffusion, failing which the recognition of fault will remain theoretical.

For drafting authorisations, finally, rigour remains essential. An authorisation to exploit an image, to be valid, must specify its duration, its territory, its media and its destination. A general and imprecise clause exposes itself to nullity, and deprives the operator of the security it believed it had acquired. The same requirement applies, mutatis mutandis, to the assignment of copyright, whose formalism protects the assignee as much as the author.

Our lawyers secure brand and agency campaigns and act for creators whose content is reused without consent. See also our image rights lawyer and infringement lawyer pages. Contact the firm: we answer every enquiry within 24 hours.