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After months of controversy, the Act “promoting the circulation and protection of creation on the Internet” (the HADOPI Act), adopted on 13 May 2009 after long and laborious parliamentary debate, has finally been censured by the Constitutional Council, to which it had been referred by opposition MPs opposed to the text. The Act was designed basically to set up a “graduated response” to the illegal downloading of works on the Internet, and introduced a “High Authority for the circulation of works and the protection of rights on the Internet” (HADOPI), a nine-member independent administrative authority...

The M6 television channel, which for the past 22 years has been showing a daily news report entitled “6 minutes”, available in various local versions and downloadable on-line on the channel’s Internet site, owns various “6 minutes” brand names to designate the broadcast. M6 noted that the channel France 3 had lodged a “7 Minutes” brand name in 2006, used for a news programme of that name, and had its competitor summoned to appear in court on a charge of infringement of a brand name. In a judgment delivered on 29 April 2009, the regional court of Paris held that the disputed signs were different...

In line with the industrial tribunal and the court of appeal of Paris (see IRIS 2008-4: 13), the social section of the court of cassation delivered a noteworthy decision on 3 June 2009 upholding the claim brought by three participants in the reality television programme “l’Ile de la Tentation” for the “participant regulations” they had signed to be reclassified as an employment contract. The programme consists of “filming the day-to-day lives of couples on an island paradise in order to test the strength of their love“. The programme’s production company referred to the clauses in the documents...

The national rules applicable to television advertising, sponsorship on television, and teleshopping have been relaxed with the transposition of the “Audiovisual Media Services” Directive of 11 December 2007 into French law. Thus, although the Act of 5 March 2009 (see IRIS 2009-4: 10) put an end to the broadcasting of advertising on the France Télévisions channels, it nevertheless authorised the private channels, other than cinema channels, to include an extra commercial break in audiovisual and cinematographic works (Article 73). This second break, which previously the CSA had allowed only during...

The court of appeal of Paris has overturned the very recent judgment by the commercial court which found Orange guilty of tied sale practices and unfair competition in its dispute with its competitors Free and SFR (see IRIS 2009-4: 9). The latter complained that the operator, which had spent EUR 203 million on buying exclusive broadcasting rights for premier league football matches between 2008 and 2011, was making subscription to its channel Orange Sports which was broadcasting the matches dependent on taking out a subscription to Orange’s broadband Internet access. Having been ordered in the...