Nathalie FAYETTE

On June 22, Chanel sued an American company selling buttons from the famous French luxury house, transformed into jewelry, for trademark counterfeiting and unfair competition. This practice, known as upcycling, seems to be an ideal solution in a world where demands for sustainability and environmentally-friendly measures continue to grow. Yet trademark owners are concerned about the practice. What is upcycling? What are the risks for consumers, but also for the companies marketing these upcycled products? Upcycling is the reuse of an existing product to make a new one that is more valuable, or at least designed to be more valuable. […]

After an earlier victory, Hermès obtains a permanent injunction against the artist Mason Rothschild. Background: In 2021, American artist Mason Rothschild had created images in the form of NFTs reproducing the Birkin bags of the luxury house Hermès in fur. The artist offered the NFTs for sale on its <metabirkins.com> website. On January 14, 2022, Hermès filed an infringement action under trademark law, accusing the artist of damaging its brand image and cybersquatting. The artist invoked his freedom of artistic expression, notably denouncing animal mistreatment in the luxury goods industry through his NFTs. The judges ruled that the artist could […]

As part of the 30th anniversary of the European single market, the Lyon Métropole Saint-Etienne Roanne Chamber of Commerce and Industry organized a session on June 6, 2023, dedicated to the protection and strategy of international intellectual property rights. Nathalie FAYETTE, MARK & LAW Manager, co-hosted this session alongside Hélène SALAVILLE, IP Manager at Haulotte Group, and Céline MATHEVET, Assistant to the INPI Regional Delegate. This session was an opportunity to recall some telling figures, in particular that companies owning at least one patent, design or trademark generate 20% more sales per employee than companies without intangible assets (EPO and […]

As the fine weather returns to France, the fear of forest fires remains. 2022 was marked by major fires in Europe, resulting in a sad record of 785,000 hectares burnt by the end of 2022. Heavy ecological and human consequences were to be deplored. In response to this scourge, the European Patent Office (EPO) has created a new Espacenet platform, providing worldwide access to patent information. This information comes from the EPO’s public databases, containing over 140 million documents. This information is intended to give inventors, scientists and engineers access to techniques developed in the field of forest fires. The […]