scène à faire

MaryW commented on the word scène à faire

the motif has become, for me, “scenes a faire,” a copyright term of art for stock scenes or plot devices in plays or novels, but which I have adopted for standard devices used in composing music. These are not “building blocks” in the sense of notes and chords, but a more complex composing “design tool.”

Scène à faire (French for "scene to be made" or "scene that must be done"; plural: scènes à faire) is a scene in a book or film which is almost obligatory for a genre of its type. In the U.S. it also refers to 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.

I think the first use in a case is this:

It is not claimed that the choice of the church as a refuge in storm lends itself to the assertion of copyrightable originality. Houses of worship have been asylums since their very beginning. At one time, the legal privilege of sanctuary attached to churches. And he who entered one of them acquired immunity against the law.

The other small details, on which stress is laid, such as the playing of the piano, the prayer, the hunger motive, as it called, are inherent in the situation itself. They are what the French call "scènes à faire". Once having placed two persons in a church during a big storm, it was inevitable that incidents like these and others which are, necessarily, associated with such a situation should force themselves upon the writer in developing the theme. Courts have held repeatedly that such similarities and incidental details necessary to the environment or setting of an action are not the material of which copyrightable originality consists.

Cain v. Universal Pictures Co., 47 F. Supp. 1013 (S.D. Cal. 1942) (Yankwich, J.)

June 24, 2016