French Competition Law provides a comprehensive review of the French rules relating to competition: restrictive agreements, commercial negotiation, abuses of a dominant position, procedure and merger control.

French Competition Law

Disparagement can be defined as conduct that discredits a competitor or the competitor's product in order to make a profit . For it to constitute unfair competition, malicious or pejorative information concerning an identifiable person must be disseminated to customers .For an act of disparagement to amount to an unfair practice, it is necessary that a number of different elements be present. The victim must be an identifiable party, there must be a corresponding product or service, the information must be disseminated to the public, and it must be pejorative or malicious in nature. Involvement in a disparaging communication is wrongful, whether the person is the author or the instigator . The Court of Cassation has ruled that even in the absence of a situation of direct and effective competition between the persons concerned ,  the publication by one party of statements likely to discredit a product manufactured or marketed by the other party may constitute an act of disparagement, without it being necessary to establish an intentional element .  Thus, a communications campaign that does not seek to tarnish the reputation of pharmacists, but only to challenge their monopoly, does not constitute a denigration of pharmacists and pharmacies . Disparagement, which may be direct or indirect , is different from both criticism and defamation.

CA Paris, 27 January 2016, LawLex201600000241JBJ: an undertaking is seeking to damage the reputation of its competitor with a view to drawing customers away from it, when it sends an e-mail to four major players in the the distribution of sports goods informing them of a ruling against the competitor for IP infringement and suggesting that it has been banned from trading, without specifying that an appeal has been lodged, and relays this information on Twitter and Facebook; CA Versailles, 12 November 2019, LawLex201900001407JBJ, recalling that disparagement consists of undermining the brand image of an undertaking or a named or identifiable product in order to draw customers away from it by using injurious words or arguments, whether or not they have an accurate basis, which are disseminated or issued in such a way as to reach the customers of the targeted undertaking, whether or not it is a competitor of the person having made such statements.

CA Montpellier, 2 July 2024, LawLex202400004998JBJ: personal attacks on the character of a competitor is not enough to constitute disparagement, unless it is accompanied by a commercial motive and derogatory allegations aimed at capturing the criticized retailer's clientele.

Cass. com., 4 November 2020, LawLex202000003065JBJ.

Cass. com., 4 March 2020, LawLex202000000338JBJ : even in the absence of a situation of direct and effective competition between the persons concerned, the disclosure by one of information likely to discredit a product marketed by the other constitutes an act of disparagement, unless the information in question relates to a matter of general interest and has a sufficient factual basis and it is expressed with some degree of restraint.

Cass. 1re civ., 12 December 2018, LawLex201900000983JBJ, holding that a press publisher who, without verifying its quality or accuracy, publishes a wine critic's column that damages the reputation of a wine when it is based on a material error resulting from an inversion of the scores attributed to the bottles in the tasting, is liable for disparagement. 

Cass. com., 21 June 2016, LawLex201600001154JBJ.

 T. com. Paris, 22 February 2013, LawLex201300000223JBJ: unlawful disparagement may be direct when the name of the competitor or its products are singled out, but also indirect when an operator assigns qualities to its own products or services by suggesting that those of the competition are lacking or, without naming names, makes clearly identifiable the undertaking directly disparaged or its products or services.

83. Disparagement