On 30 September 2025, the Civil Chamber of the Supreme Court upheld the ruling handed down by the Madrid Provincial Court recognising Fumiko Negishi as co-author of 221 works by Antonio De Felipe, as well as reaffirming the jurisdiction of the civil courts to rule on her status as author.
Fumiko Negishi worked for many years in De Felipe’s painting studio, producing numerous paintings according to his instructions. In general, these instructions included requests from clients who placed commissions, the theme of the works, providing a photograph for portraits, or sometimes sketches for the final work. Once these instructions had been received, Fumiko was responsible for executing the work, although De Felipe would sometimes add his own touches, such as strokes, smudges or graphic elements.
One of the arguments put forward by De Felipe to reaffirm his sole authorship of the 221 paintings was a ruling handed down by the social courts, which classified the relationship between the parties as an employment relationship and ruled that Fumiko’s dismissal was unfair. This ruling established as a proven fact that Fumiko acted as an assistant in De Felipe’s workshop, who entrusted her with the technical work of his art, giving her orders on how to carry out the work and providing her with the necessary materials to do so.
However, the Supreme Court refers to the doctrine according to which there is limited effectiveness of the positive res judicata of judgments handed down in a jurisdiction other than the civil jurisdiction, which are not always binding. In this case, the authorship of a work is a matter for the civil courts, so the fact that the labour court found that there was an employment relationship between the parties does not prevent an acknowledgement of co-authorship over the works.
Thus, it is based on an assessment of the evidence presented that it should be determined whether Fumiko’s work was substantial enough to consider her a co-author or whether, on the contrary, it was mechanical or technical in nature.
The Chamber bases its decision on the criterion of subjective originality applied by the CJEU, understanding that for a work to be considered original, it must reflect the personality of its author and express their free and creative decisions. In the case of the disputed works, it has been proven that Fumiko made original contributions, as she was the one who worked alone for hours in the workshop to create the paintings.
As stated by the Madrid Provincial Court, when we refer to works of art, two phases can be discerned in their creation process: conception and execution. However, the former cannot be attributed with all the importance as De Felipe claimed, since the quality of personal execution in a material and concrete form of expression is what constitutes the realisation of the original work itself, which is eligible for protection. In no case can the activity carried out by Fumiko be limited to a mere mechanical or complementary task comparable to a tool or instrument used by De Felipe, since she necessarily had to make decisions in order to achieve the final expression of the idea in the painting.
Therefore, it is concluded that both contributed to the creation of the final pictorial work, with De Felipe conceiving the idea and Fumiko capturing it on canvas according to his instructions, such that both would enjoy co-authorship status over the 221 disputed paintings.
Jorge Díaz Rodríguez
Lawyer
