FRANCE ‘Loi Evin’ and the Internet


When the Internet became widely accessible, some people criticised the existing IP law claiming that it was not adapted to the new, virtual world. This was the case for most of the laws related to intellectual property (IP). Some 20 years later, it’s clear that the law was sufficiently general for case law to be adapted in the virtual world.


If this is true, companies in the field of alcoholic or tobacco products have to continue to be more careful in their communications and monitor what is going on in social networking sites.


The first step occurred in 2008 when the French court had to decide whether the use of a domain name with the ‘.fr’ suffix that linked to alcoholic products was within the scope of the law. An association sued the brewer Heineken, which considered that the use of Internet was not an authorised means of communication. Heineken argued that preventing the use of the Internet ought to be considered as a breach of freedom of commerce. The Court of Appeal of Paris judged, on February 13, 2008, that websites are not included in the list of exemptions and should not be allowed as such. The Heineken website was not accessible in France for several months until they had designed a new front page which required that the Internet user declare his or her home country and date of birth before getting any product information.


This solution is in line with French regulations. What will happen as the social networks develop? Most companies are officially present on those networks but it appears that numerous unofficial pages are blooming.


There are two kinds of pages that may be noted: first, those created by people wishing to show that they are ‘fans’ of the trademark, but most of these end up not being used after a while. The second type are those created by social networks in, for example, Facebook. The latter has profiles for famous French wines which allow users to indicate a place where they have been or live.


www.worldipreview.com World Intellectual Property Review e-Digest 2012 129


WHEN CONDUCTING TRADEMARK SEARCHES, COMPANIES ACTIVE IN TOBACCO OR ALCOHOL PRODUCTS SHOULD CONDUCT IDENTICAL SEARCHES IN ALL CLASSES OF INTERNATIONAL CLASSIFICATION.


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