Glossary
French: saisie-contrefaçon
The saisie-contrefaçon (roughly seh-ZEE cohn-truh-fah-SOHN) — literally “infringement seizure” — is a court-authorized procedure that lets a rights holder obtain proof of infringement, including at the alleged infringer’s own premises. It is one of the most powerful evidence tools in French intellectual property practice, and it is reserved to holders of registered rights — one more concrete reason to register in France and at EU level before trouble starts.
To understand the saisie, US counsel must start from a structural fact: France has no discovery. There are no document requests, no interrogatories, no depositions. A plaintiff cannot file first and then extract the record from the defendant’s files. With narrow exceptions, the court sees only the evidence the trademark owner assembled itself, largely before suing.
The saisie-contrefaçon is the mechanism that fills that gap. On the strength of its registered right, the owner obtains a judge’s authorization and then, with a commissaire de justice (bailiff/judicial officer) and often technical assistants, gathers proof of the infringement — descriptions, samples, and documentation — at the location where the infringing activity occurs. It secures, at the very outset and under judicial control, the kind of material a US litigator would expect to obtain only later, through discovery.
There is no direct US equivalent. The closest reference points are partial at best: a civil ex parte seizure in counterfeiting cases under the Lanham Act, or expedited evidence preservation — but none maps cleanly onto the saisie, which is a routine, structural feature of ordinary infringement practice in France rather than an extraordinary remedy. For a US team, the mental adjustment is significant: in France, the decisive evidence-gathering move often happens before the complaint, not in discovery after it.
The saisie is potent but formal. It is generally authorized on an ex parte petition and executed by a judicial officer within the scope the judge allows. What the judge authorizes is either a detailed description of the suspected infringing goods or services — with or without the taking of samples — or an actual seizure of those goods and of any related documents. The seizing party must then commence proceedings on the merits — civil or criminal — within a short statutory deadline: 20 working days, or 31 calendar days if that is longer, running from the day of the seizure. Miss it and the entire seizure, the description included, is annulled at the seized party’s request and its fruits are lost. The statutory basis is Article L716-4-7 of the French Intellectual Property Code, which transposes Article 7 of EU Directive 2004/48. Because of these constraints, the choice between a discreet bailiff report and a saisie — or sequencing one after the other — is a strategic decision.
A US brand owner with a French registration discovers a French reseller stocking imitations. Rather than rely on client screenshots, its counsel petitions the court, obtains authorization, and sends a judicial officer to the reseller’s warehouse to record and sample the goods — freezing court-grade proof before the reseller is alerted, then filing suit within the required window.
The saisie-contrefaçon is the centerpiece of building evidence of infringement in France and a recurring step in trademark litigation in France. It presupposes a valid trademark registration and typically precedes, or follows, a writ of summons. See also trademark infringement in France.