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.

Read the article on IPTwins ↗︎

Read next

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 Governance

DNS Abuse: How Can Domain Names Linked to the Same Actor Be Connected?

On 18 August 2026, ICANN published for public comment the Initial Report of its DNS Abuse Mitigation Policy Development Process (PDP 1). Among its proposals are Associated Domain Checks: when a registrar acts on an abuse report, it should also examine the other domain names held by the same customer. In its comments of 25 September 2026, the WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Center supports the approach but points out its main limitation: the checks stop at the edge of a single registrar's portfolio. Bad actors know this and spread their registrations across several registrars, which hampers consolidated UDRP proceedings. WIPO suggests exploring cross-registrar mechanisms without saying which data could link the names. The article argues that payment data, pseudonymised, could serve as that common denominator, while acknowledging its limits (prepaid cards, fraud, multiple payment methods): an indicator rather than proof. It marks a shift from a one-domain, one-investigation logic to a network approach.

Cybersecurity · Cybersquatting · Domain Name Law · Domain Name System · ICANN · Online Brand Protection · UDRP

28 September 2026

Initially published on iptwins.com

Blockchain & Law

DNS and Web3: How Can We Avoid Importing Cryptosquatting into the DNS?

The DNS and blockchain-based alternative naming systems are converging, with projects such as .BLOCKCHAIN and the .ROBOT cryptoTLD seeking to operate the same string in both worlds. In August 2026, ICANN's Technical Study Group released an Initial Report on integrating gTLDs with alternative naming systems, built on a "string + controller" principle: the same name must remain under the same control across systems, with its status kept in sync. In September 2026, the SSAC supported this synchronisation but noted that applying the UDRP and the URS becomes difficult when a registrant exists only in an alternative system, without conventional registration data. The WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Center warns that cybersquatting is already widespread in these systems: mapping names automatically into the DNS would import existing infringements. Trademark owners therefore need functionally equivalent protection mechanisms, including a way to prevent infringing names from being activated, as initiatives like Unstoppable Domains joining GlobalBlock have begun to show.

Blockchain · Cybersquatting · Domain Name System · ICANN · New gTLDs · Online Brand Protection · UDRP · URS · Web3 Domains

24 September 2026

Initially published on iptwins.com

← All articles

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

Please select listing to show.