Emmanuel Gillet

Third-Party Liability

Lacoste v Shein: When a Platform Can No Longer Hide Behind Hosting Status

A platform is not one legal object. In Lacoste v Roadget Business Pte. Ltd. and Infinite Styles Services Co. Ltd. (Paris, Pôle 5 ch. 1, 8 July 2026, RG 25/12454), the Court of Appeal refused to let the operators of shein.com shelter behind the hosting exemption of Article 6 of the Digital Services Act: goods “sold by Shein”, Shein labels and packaging, and the Commission’s designation of the service as a very large online platform revealed a hybrid activity, and the characterisation attached not to the platform as a whole but to the role actually played in the disputed transactions. The judgment reaches beyond the twenty offending products. “Lacoste”, typed into the internal search engine, infringes the word marks; “crocodile”, a free word, grounds unfair competition and parasitism. Interim damages rise from €30,000 to €300,000 — the defendants’ own failure to disclose their turnover counting against them — and the measures run across the European Union.

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Third-Party Liability

Advertising keywords: beyond distinctive signs

Under Article 313-6-2 of the French Criminal Code, selling tickets for a show without the producer's authorisation is punishable by a fine of up to EUR 15,000 (EUR 30,000 for repeat offences), a provision aimed at fighting the artificial inflation of ticket prices. PRODISS, the national union of musical and variety show producers, found that Google's advertising service enabled unauthorised resellers such as StubHub and Viagogo to advertise on google.fr. In a judgment of 15 October 2020, the Paris Judicial Court held that, by providing its advertising service to professionals offering show tickets without the producers' authorisation, Google engaged its liability towards producers and organisers. The court prohibited Google from allowing the purchase of keywords combining terms such as purchase/sale, tickets and show/concert for advertisements directed at the French public, unless the advertiser holds the producer's written authorisation.

Court Litigation · Online Brand Protection · Trademark Law
20 November 2020
Initially published on iptwins.com
Third-Party Liability

The perpetuation of trademark infringement by third parties: judgment of the CJEU

MBK Rechtsanwälte, a German law firm and trademark owner, had obtained from the Landgericht Düsseldorf (17 October 2016) an order prohibiting the competing firm mk advokaten from using the acronym 'mbk'. References to the prohibited name nevertheless kept resurfacing on third-party directory websites, which republished the original advertisement on their own initiative. Was mk advokaten, the beneficiary of the advertisement, liable for these republications? The CJEU answered in the negative (C-684/19, 2 July 2020): an operator who arranged for an advertisement to be placed on one website does not 'use' the sign when other website operators reproduce that advertisement independently, without any direct or indirect relationship with it. Absent such a relationship, it falls to the trademark owner to detect the infringing references and to pursue their removal — a significant shift of the enforcement burden in online trademark disputes.

Court Litigation · European Union Law · Trademark Law
24 August 2020
Initially published on iptwins.com
Domain Name Law

COSHIELD: The Scope of the UDRP in Trademark Disputes

Not every dispute involving a trade mark and a domain name amounts to cybersquatting. In Polyco Healthline Limited v. David Beatson (WIPO Case No. D2026-1893), the panelist denied the complaint brought against coshield.com, a domain used since 2020 to sell personal protective equipment in the very sector where the complainant has exploited its SHIELD trade mark since 1997, and despite a settlement agreement concluded between the parties in 2021. The decision turns on the moment of acquisition: created in 2014, the domain name appears to have changed hands in May 2020, at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the combination of “Co” and “Shield” could describe the business rather than target Polyco. The evidence being “finely balanced”, bad faith was not established. This article examines why trade mark infringement and cybersquatting are two paths that do not necessarily converge.

Cybersquatting · Domain Name Law · Trademark Law · UDRP
23 August 2026
Initially published on iptwins.com
Counterfeiting

Fendi v Rolo Fashion: Assessing Damages When Counterfeit Sales Do Not Translate into Lost Sales

Establishing infringement and pricing it are two very different exercises. In Fendi Italia Srl & Ors v Rolo Fashion Ltd & Anor [2026] EWHC 1703 (IPEC), four LVMH houses had already obtained judgment in default on liability; what remained was the assessment of damages for the online sale of counterfeit luxury goods. HHJ Hacon refused to treat the quality of “superfakes” as proof of substitution, rebuilt the scale of the trading from incomplete disclosure, and settled on 4,752 sales, a substitution rate of 15% and £200,000 of lost profit. For the remaining 4,039 transactions he applied the user principle, held the hypothetical royalty available in trade mark cases and set it at a “bare minimum” of 3%; reputational harm was rejected for want of evidence. This article reads the judgment against Article 13 of Directive 2004/48 and asks what online monitoring must preserve if a loss is later to be proved.

Counterfeiting · Court Litigation · Marketplace Enforcement · Trademark Law
19 August 2026
Initially published on iptwins.com

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Article Information

Author

Emmanuel Gillet

Publication Date

28 August 2026

Jurisdiction

European Union, France

Topics

Counterfeiting · Court Litigation · European Digital Law · Marketplace Enforcement · Trademark Law

Industry

Fashion, Luxury, Retail & E-commerce

Related Decision(s)

RG n° 25/12454Cour d’appel de Paris, Pôle 5, chambre 1Lacoste v Roadget Business Pte. Ltd. and Infinite Styles Services Co. Ltd., Paris Court of Appeal, 8 July 20262026-07-08

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