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At-a-glance: Institut National de la Propiété Industrielle 26 bis rue de Saint-Pétersbourg, 75800 Paris Cedex 08, France Tel: +33 (0) 820 210 211 Website: www.inpi.fr France has not had the economic bounce back to health that some its European n... [more]

France has not had the economic bounce back to health that some its European neighbours, notably Germany and Switzerland, have seen in the past year and this is reflected in filing numbers for both patents and trade marks. As an example, its trade mark applications through the Madrid System only grew 1.2% to 3,565 compared to the previous year, where Switzerland was up 8.3%. International designs were similar, with the country up 4.6% according to WIPO, compared to 41.8% from Switzerland.

France had its fair share of landmark cases last year, particularly in trade marks, with the referral of the Adwords dispute, and copyright. It was also interesting to note a few cases concerning comparative advertising, however, which have moved on the traditional French attitude to this form of marketing. One case between Leader Price and Carrefour over adverts that implied the latter's products were more expensive, resulted in €300,000 being paid to Carrefour, but on the grounds of misleading advertising as the basket of goods was considered unrepresentative and the wording illegal in its implications. Carrefour seems to think it has learned how best to conduct comparative advertising as a result, for it launched its own campaign claiming to be cheaper than rivals in October 2010.

The French Cour de cassation saw its referral of Google v LVMH decided by the Court of Justice of the EU (CJ) in March 2010, with similar cases building on it in Austria and, in March 2011, an Advocate-General opinion on the UK case between Interflora and Marks & Spencer. The Cour de cassation then sent the case back to the Court of Appeals. France has also quietly hosted a developing area of law that pits trade mark rights against geographical indications. In March 2011 the CJ ruled on one of the string of cases between Anheuser-Busch and Budejovicky Budvar over the Bud and Budweiser trade marks, in this case preventing the Czech brewer from opposing Anheuser-Busch CTM applications for Bud. It was suggested that this ruling would have little effect, given that local law would prevent the mark being used in countries – such as France – where Bud is registered as a geographical indication by Budwar. While theoretically true, in practice a case between the two brewers in France has already implied that geographical indications such as Bud are invalid. It is now before the Court of Appeals.

Meanwhile at a political level French President Nicolas Sarkozy seemed determined to tackle the issue of online piracy during his tenure as chair of the G20. Speaking to a group of French publishers, Sarkozy said he thought the G20 was the right forum to tackle such a political, international topic and pledged his support to similar suggestions made by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. It will be interesting to see if anything comes out of his proposed meeting in France later in 2011 in advance of the full G20.