Le Figaro has obtained recognition of the exploitation of its trademark “Jours de France” proving its real and genuine use on Internet, through observations and online audience measurements.
In its judgment of 20 November 2015, the Paris Court of Appeal rejected arguments from the opposing party, the company “Entreprendre”, which challenged the relevance of the report for the hearing provided, due to the existence of robots or “bots” whose mission is to browse the web, to visit websites and to extract data.
The judges have instead considered that “the appellant product remaining documents prepared by AT Internet (…) explaining audience measurement and demonstrating that the number of unique visitors (an average of about 1,700 per month) is not significantly lower than the number of visitors; the quantitative criterion is not the decisive criterion and determining the distribution by Internet will potentially ensure the influence of the product.” The Court added that the exploitation magazine paper, even small, during the period in question reinforces the real and genuine use of the trademark on Internet in the previous three months from the application for revocation of that sign.
Le Figaro has obtained a judgment against “Entreprendre” who had published a paper magazine entitled “Jours de France”. The Court also acknowledged that it had committed acts of parasitism by taking advantage of the economic value of this press title, by the choice of the same content and the recovery of layout and graphics. “Entreprendre” is ordered to pay the Figaro € 90,000 in damages.
Jours de France, created in 1954, was a newspaper which would be called “People magazine” today. It was bought in 1988 by Le Figaro who had stopped its release in 1989. In 2011, the newspaper decided to relaunch the magazine on Internet under the domain name joursdefrance.lefigaro.fr.
On September 4, the BBC receives a formal notice to stop the continued issue of Company magazine “Entreprendre”, the trademark holder Day France filed in 2003 in Le Figaro that opposes its own brand. The Court of Appeal overturned the judgment of the TGI (Paris Court), which had pronounced the revocation of the Figaro’s trademark as of 7 December 2013. The Court was based on the case law of the ECJ on the elements to consider in order establishing the reality of commercial exploitation.
