Euro map image 'stolen'

A small French company specialising in artwork produced from satellite photographs has accused the European Central Bank of illegally reprinting its map of Europe on the back of some 25bn euro banknotes.

The company, M-SAT, based in Clermont-Ferrand, claims that the map is the result of four years' work, costing more than £2.5m to produce. It has lodged a formal complaint for counterfeiting and copyright abuse with the Clermont district court.

"We discovered this scandal earlier this month," M-SAT's managing director, Laurent Masselot, said yesterday. "We were looking at the new euro notes and a colleague was intrigued by the map on the back. After verification, we have established beyond doubt that the image belongs to us. It's flagrant plagiarism."

Mr Masselot said the full-colour, poster-sized work was entitled The European Union from Space. It was published in 1996 - when the design for the euro banknotes was being finalised.

"This isn't just any old snapshot from space," he said. "Hundreds of satellite photographs were matched with the earth's curve, superimposed and aligned with each other, and their colours and perspectives harmonised. It was a mammoth undertaking by our graphic artists."

Mr Masselot said he was certain the euro banknote map was M-SAT's because the company's artists had taken "a number of liberties" with shapes, colours, mountain ranges and forests in order to produce a more aesthetically pleasing whole. "Remarkably," he said, "the same identical features also appear on the notes".

"This is my company's work and it is completely unacceptable that the ECB should use it without paying rights or obtaining due authorisation," he said. "I'm not asking for the notes to be withdrawn, as legally I am entitled to do, but I do want compensation."

A spokesman for the ECB said yesterday that as far as he knew, "all the relevant rights were acquired in 1997 when the Austrian whose designs were chosen for the bank-notes submitted his winning proposal".