France as a brand

By Catherine Maminska

On 28^th of June, the French Cabinet for Economic Development created a think-tank aiming to analyse the value of France as a trade mark - an avant-garde idea that the French government is willing to conceptualize within the next 6 months.

Opinions will be collected from the general public until 7^th September. Any French speaking person can participate to the think tank by responding to the questionnaire provided online.

On 28^th October a final presentation will be given and there will be a possible launch of brand France in the beginning of 2014.

The idea behind this concept has been largely evoked in Simon Anholt’s latest books - Places: Identity, Image and Reputation and Competitive Identity: the new brand management for nations, cities and regions. For him, branding a country is a way to recover economically against the today very competitive market.  It can help a country to distinguish itself from the crowd.

This concept has already been put into practice by the Anglo-Saxons. The Americans and Canadians have used the concept of Nation Branding to build and manage their reputation. The British have been relatively shy and preferred to incorporate nation branding in their public diplomacy.  However France is probably the first country that explicitly mentions the concept of “trademarking itself”: http://www.marque.france.fr/. The website address itself is evocative, marque meaning trademark in French.

In the paper presented on 28^th of June various French personalities from the sector of tourism, industry, research, design or culture have been consulted to define the mission of the think-tank.

It has been trying to expose the value of France as a trademark: what does France evoke to others? Un certain, je ne sais quoi? Un art de vivre?

It also tried to determine the extent of the branding: should children in school be taught the value of France as a brand?

There has been no mention however to the trade mark legislation as such.  No lawyers have been consulted per se, which is quite worrying knowing the power a brand has. 

Let’s wait until the 28^th of October to see the outcome of the questionnaire.

France: Cour de cassation on software copyright

Legalis.net reports today (en français)  that on 17 October 2012 the Cour de cassation annulled a decision of the cour d’appel  of Aix-en-Provence, which appeared to have forgotten the rules of originality for copyright in computer programs. It has to be shown that:

les choix opérés [témoignent] d’un apport intellectuel propre et d’un effort personnalisé de celui qui avait élaboré le logiciel litigieux, seuls de nature à lui conférer le caractère d’une œuvre originale protégée. 

So, software is protected only if it is the author's own intellectual creation - under the software directive, if not expressly in UK copyright law. France seems to have got it more right than us.

The cour d'appel had held that the software was original because it provided a particular solution to the management of bailiffs - a significant problem, I can confirm, having once acted for a large organisation of bailiffs ... The cour de cassation referred back to its 1986 decision in Pachot, where it had held that the creator of a program had to impress his or her own personality on it: it had to be more than the mere implementation of an automatic, logical process. And that, in all areas of copyright law, must be right - although our law might not say so in so many words, and the required standard of originality might be abysmally low (and falling).

You can read the judgment here, si vous voulez.

Website is copyright work

How websites are protected is a matter of speculation, or so I tell people. Obviously there might be several copyright works involved, and perhaps also database right (if that counts for anything). Now we have high-level confirmation that copyright will protect a website in France, with a decision of the Cour de Cassation reported by the Legalis.net blog. Vente-privee.com accused private-club of infringing copyright in the site architecture: the defendant argued that there was insufficient originality to sustain the claim, with which lower courts agreed but the Cour de Cassation did not. The matter has been remanded to the cour d'appel, Versailles.