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After the recent cases involving Orange Sports and the courts' examination, in terms of consumer law, of exclusive content distributed by Internet access providers (IAPs) (see IRIS 2009-6: 12), it is now up to the Authority on Competition ( Autorité de la Concurrence ) to adopt a position. The matter was referred to the Authority by the Minister of the Economy; she invited the Authority to make a statement on the compatibility of the exclusive access to highly attractive content that some IAPs reserved for their subscribers with the regulations on competition. She also invited it to draw up an...

Apart from the high-profile “graduated response” it contains, the Act of 12 June 2009 “promoting the circulation and protection of creation on the Internet” also institutes the status of the on-line press editor, reforms journalists’ copyright protection, and makes changes to media chronology. Article 27 of the Act supplements Article 1 of the Act of 1 August 1986 reforming the legal scheme applicable to the press, creating the status of the on-line press editor and details this person’s responsibility. “On-line press service” refers to any on-line service of communication to the public edited...

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...