A colour can be registered as a trade mark, but few pass examination. Distinctiveness, arrangement of colour combinations, acquired distinctiveness, bad faith: what the law and case law say, and other ways to protect a colour.
Telling retailers that a competitor sells counterfeits can amount to disparagement until a court has ruled. The Cour de cassation reiterated this on 23 September 2026. How to respond to copying without putting yourself in the wrong.
A name, sometimes that of a designer, a pattern, a shape, a date: a bag carries several signs, which trade mark law protects very unevenly. Lessons from the Fauré Le Page case, closed by the French Cour de cassation on 23 September 2026.
Of 383 photographs reproduced without a contract, 24 were held to be original. Some lessons from a judgment of the Rennes judicial court of 3 September 2026, useful to photographers and to those who publish their images.
On 8 September 2021, a Romanian schoolteacher published a twenty-two-line text on her Facebook page, entitled “A short guide for parents at the start of the school year”. The message was simple: she did not wish to receive gifts. Six days later, an online daily reproduced the text in full in an article, without asking…
April 2021. On a web-radio programme, a well-known commentator from the world of French song laments that record labels no longer launch “handsome” singers or “gorgeous young women”. His remarks, made in particular about a successful young singer, spark a media storm. Three months later, French singer Grand Corps Malade replies in song: his track…
