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The programme Les guignols de l'info is broadcast each day on Canal Plus, and is very popular. The best-known people in France in politics, culture, the economy and sport are represented by puppets. The programme is mainly humorous, often derisive, and sometimes ridicules the characters. How far may ridicule go? Mr Jacques Calvet is chairman of the company PSA which manufactures Citroën cars. He claimed that the products of his trade-mark had been badly treated in these programmes. Contrary to the Court of Appeal in Paris, which held that the content of the programme was purely whimsical, was not...

Television gets through a vast quantity of cinematographic films. It waits impatiently for the cinema screen projection period to run out to show them on the television screen. The possibility of commercial breaks then becomes an essential aspect of the televised broadcasting of cinematographic works. The subject is closely governed by regulation - firstly by the Intellectual Property Code, which protects non-pecuniary copyright very closely, and secondly by audio-visual legislation, which distinguishes between the types of television channel. Private, unencrypted channels may insert one commercial...

On 25 March 1997 the Monopolies Commission reached its decision on the complaint lodged by Canal Plus against TF1 . Canal Plus claimed that the specific discounts TF1 allowed to advertisers devoting more than half their budget to the channel, and the additional discount for advertisers paying TF1 between FF 1.5 and 45 million for advertising, where this represented between 80 and 100% of their television advertising budget, constituted abuse of a dominant position. The Commission refused the precautionary measures Canal Plus claimed, although it did not deny that such practices might constitute...

The Court of Cassation recently set aside two decisions by the Courts of Appeal in Paris and Rennes on advertising from products which, although not themselves tobacco, evoked tobacco. The products in question carried the brand-names Camel Boots and Camel Trophy. In the first case the decision was set aside on the grounds of violation of rights of the defence. In the second case the High Court addressed the difficult matter of advertising for products commercialised by companies independent of any company manufacturing tobacco products but linked to the latter by brand-name licence agreements....

As soon as the posters appeared throughout France, AGRIF (the French general association against racism and for respect of the French Christian identity) took urgent legal action to obtain a ban on the poster for the film Larry Flynt, on the grounds that it infringed the respect of religious beliefs. The background of the disputed poster showed a woman's body, from the knees to the stomach, clad in a bikini, and superposed on it was the almost stylised image of a man in a crucified position, with the American flag draped round his hips. The judges, taking the classical line of caselaw, while recognising...