Glossary
French: droit des marques
Trademark law (droit des marques, also called the law of distinctive signs — droit des signes distinctifs) is the body of legal rules governing trademarks and other distinctive signs.
In France, trademark law is codified in Book 7 of the Intellectual Property Code — the functional counterpart of the Lanham Act. European Union trademarks are governed by EU regulations administered by the EUIPO, and French national law is itself harmonized with EU trademark directives, so the same underlying rules on distinctiveness and likelihood of confusion recur, with local procedural variations, across all EU member states. Case law of the Court of Justice of the EU shapes both layers: it interprets the EU directives and regulations directly, and French courts apply that interpretation when reading Book 7, which makes CJEU case law relevant even to a purely French national dispute.
US trademark rights are grounded in use in commerce; registration is declaratory of rights that use creates. French and EU trademark rights are grounded in registration: rights are acquired by filing and registering with the INPI or the EUIPO, with no use requirement at filing — although a registration unused for five years becomes vulnerable to revocation for non-use. There is no common-law trademark in France; unregistered signs are protected, if at all, through other doctrines (such as unfair competition) or as other categories of distinctive signs, never as a “senior user” trademark right of the kind that exists in the United States.
That single structural difference cascades through the rest of the system. Because rights are registration-based, France and the EU need an opposition procedure to let owners of earlier rights police the register themselves — the INPI and EUIPO do not refuse a new application merely because it conflicts with an earlier mark. Because rights are registration-based, availability searches (clearance searches) are conducted primarily against registers rather than against evidence of market use. And because registration can outlive actual commercial activity, the system needs revocation mechanisms — for non-use, deceptiveness or genericide — to periodically clean the register of rights no longer justified by real-world use.
Three institutions do the work that the USPTO and the federal courts do together in the United States: the INPI examines and registers French national marks and administers French oppositions and administrative revocation/invalidity actions; the EUIPO does the same at EU level; and the Tribunal judiciaire (with a small number of specialized chambers handling all French trademark litigation) hears infringement, invalidity and revocation actions that go beyond what the administrative offices can decide — there is no separate specialized IP court comparable to the Federal Circuit’s role in US patent appeals, but trademark litigation is concentrated in a handful of designated courts.
Trademark law is the umbrella under which every other term in this glossary sits. For filing strategy in France or the EU, see French trademark registration and EU trademark registration; for enforcement, see trademark infringement in France and trademark litigation in France. See also: distinctive character, principle of specialty, likelihood of confusion.