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In June 2012 the audiovisual regulatory authority (Conseil Supérieur de l’Audiovisuel - CSA) drew up a report on the result of the application of its deliberation on product placement in television programmes, adopted on 16 February 2010 (see IRIS 2010-4/23). The deliberation made provision for such a report to be drawn up two years after it came into force. Adopted in application of Article 14-1 of the Act of 5 March 2009 transposing the AVMS Directive into national legislation, the deliberation authorised product placement in France “in cinematographic works, audiovisual fiction works, and music...

On 23 July 2012, at the end of a thorough three-month examination, the Competition Authority (Autorité de la Concurrence) authorised the acquisition by Vivendi and the Canal Plus Group of the DTV channels Direct 8 and Direct Star, subject to a number of conditions. It should be recalled that on 5 December 2011 the main French pay television operator sent notification of this acquisition, which opened up pay television for the operator. In examining the notification, however, the Competition Authority found that the operation raised “serious doubts” as to impeding competition (see IRIS 2012-5/21),...

On 23 July, in deliberating again on the acquisition of TPS and CanalSat by Vivendi Universal and Canal Plus, the Competition Authority made its authorisation conditional on a number of injunctions “such as to re-establish sufficient competition in the pay television market”. The operation had only been authorised in 2006 on condition that 59 undertakings were respected, and the Competition Authority, noting that the Canal Plus Group had failed to observe ten of these - including some that were of crucial importance - decided in September 2011 to withdraw its decision authorising the operation...

On 12 July 2012, the first civil chamber of the Court of Cassation delivered three important judgments, overturning the judgment of the court of appeal in Paris which had found that Google Images and Google Vidéo had not taken the necessary steps to make it impossible to put images and films that infringed copyright back on line. The Court of Cassation held that this was tantamount to requiring Google to observe a general obligation of supervision and demanding, out of proportion to the desired aim, the setting up of a blocking arrangement for an unlimited period of time. The Court of Cassation...

In an important judgment delivered on 12 July 2012, the Court of Cassation found that the Google Suggest semi-automatic search tool made it possible to infringe copyright and/or neighbouring rights, by directing Internet users’ searches towards services that offer illegal downloading. In the case at issue, the French national syndicate of music producers (Syndicat National des Producteurs de Musique - SNEP) had noted that when an Internet user entered the name of a performer or an album in Google, the browser’s “Suggest” tool systematically associated the name with on-line services allowing piracy,...