A French competitor is now selling a version of the concept you financed, and you are managing the response from London, New York, Dubai or Singapore. On 23 September 2026 the commercial chamber of the Cour de cassation, France’s highest court for commercial disputes, published two rulings in the Bulletin, the official selection of decisions chosen for their legal importance. Read together, they change the file a foreign company must build before a copied idea becomes a winning claim. Appeal no. 25-14.331 holds that economic parasitism, parasitisme économique in French, requires an identified and individualized economic value, and that selling the concept first does not by itself prove that value. Appeal no. 24-22.474 holds that an unfair-competition claim, concurrence déloyale, succeeds only if you prove positive and personal acts by the company you actually sue, not merely that it benefited from a copy made by someone else. This guide explains those holdings for a founder or a foreign parent, then sets out the French court, the five-year clock, the urgent application and the evidence that matches the new test. It is not a trademark manual and it is not a guide to dismissing a French employee. Those are different claims, with different proof, and they are treated separately below.

I. A French competitor copied your concept: what must you prove after 23 September 2026?

A. Which economic value must you identify before a copied idea becomes parasitism?

French law does not have a separate statute titled parasitisme. The claim sits on the general tort rule. Article 1240 of the Civil Code, in force on 24 September 2026, provides that « Tout fait quelconque de l’homme, qui cause à autrui un dommage, oblige celui par la faute duquel il est arrivé à le réparer. » Any human act that causes harm to another obliges the person through whose fault it happened to repair it. Fault, harm and a causal link are the three conditions. Economic parasitism is the name the courts give to one form of that fault: riding in another operator’s wake to capture the value of work you did not do. Many French commentaries stop at those three conditions. The ruling of 23 September 2026 shows why that checklist is no longer enough. A foreign company that files a claim with only a launch date, a similar campaign name and a feeling that the idea was original is asking a French court to do the work the Court of Cassation has just said the appeal court failed to do.

The facts of appeal no. 25-14.331 are useful because they look, at first sight, like a strong copycat case. A company, SV concept et process, built a commercial concept for bakeries around Epiphany: in-store events built on coins struck with the crests of Top 14 rugby clubs and Ligue 1 football clubs, after a licence authorising that use. The concept was first used in 2016 in the bakery of an individual manager, then extended in 2017 to other bakeries, including one mill company under a partnership contract dated 17 May 2017. After the creator went into judicial liquidation, the liquidator, the bakery company and the individual sued several mill companies for parasitisme, alleging that those companies had marketed a product imitating the Epiphany-coin concept. The Aix-en-Provence court of appeal awarded 200,000 euros jointly for economic loss and 30,000 euros to the individual for moral harm. The Cour de cassation quashed those two heads only, and sent them back to the same court of appeal differently composed. The claim is not declared hopeless. The award is void because the legal test was not applied.

The Court’s own statement of the law is short and must be read as written. In Cour de cassation, commercial chamber, 23 September 2026, appeal no. 25-14.331, published in the Bulletin, the Court held, under Article 1240: « Il résulte de ce texte que le parasitisme économique est une forme de déloyauté, constitutive d’une faute, qui consiste, pour un opérateur économique, à se placer dans le sillage d’un autre afin de tirer indûment profit de ses efforts, de son savoir-faire, de la notoriété acquise ou des investissements consentis. » Economic parasitism is a form of disloyalty, and therefore a fault, consisting in an economic operator placing itself in another’s wake in order to profit unduly from that other’s efforts, know-how, acquired reputation or investments. The next sentence is the one foreign claimants miss: « Il appartient à celui qui se prétend victime d’actes de parasitisme d’identifier la valeur économique individualisée qu’il invoque, fruit d’un savoir-faire ou d’efforts humains et financiers. » The person who claims to be the victim must identify the individualized economic value relied on, a value that is the fruit of know-how or of human and financial efforts. In the same ruling the Court added that ideas circulate without being owned by their first user, and that merely taking up a competitor’s concept and developing it is not, in itself, an act of parasitism. That further statement sits in paragraph 8 of the decision. It is why a mood board and a first-sale date do not close the case.

The appeal court had treated the concept as singular because nobody had shown that it was a usual commercial operation, and had deduced from that singularity a value capable of fraudulent appropriation. The Cour de cassation rejected that shortcut in terms a trial lawyer can plead. The same decision of 23 September 2026, appeal no. 25-14.331, states: « En se déterminant ainsi, après s’être bornée à constater l’existence d’un concept, sans caractériser une valeur économique identifiée et individualisée, fruit de la notoriété acquise ou du savoir-faire et des efforts humains et financiers consentis par la société SV concept et process, la société Bellavy et M. [S], laquelle ne pouvait se déduire de la seule antériorité de sa commercialisation, la cour d’appel n’a pas donné de base légale à sa décision. » Finding that a concept exists, without characterizing an identified and individualized economic value that is the fruit of acquired reputation or of know-how and of human and financial efforts, is not a legal basis. And that value cannot be deduced from the mere fact that you commercialized the concept earlier. Priority of sale is a fact. It is not the value.

For a foreign company, the practical translation is a file, not a slogan. Identify one value, not a vague brand feeling. If the value is know-how, show the process: the specification, the supplier contracts, the licence you paid for, the training you gave French outlets, the quality-control steps a copycat skipped. If the value is human and financial effort, show the numbers: design invoices, tooling, payroll of the team that built the concept, advertising spend, trade-fair costs, and the French-language customer materials. If the value is acquired reputation, show that reputation in France or with the French public you say was diverted: dated press, search and sales figures, not a sentence saying the concept was unique. A former partnership, such as the 17 May 2017 contract in this case, can explain how the defendant saw the concept. It does not replace the value. Nor does the fact that your French subsidiary, or the foreign parent, was first to market. Build the file as if the court will ask, line by line, what was spent, by whom, and why the copy captured that spending rather than an idea anyone could have had. Keep the documents in a form a French judge can read: translations of contracts, a chronology, and a side-by-side of the original and the copy that points to the costly elements, not only to a similar colour.

Two boundaries matter before you spend on proceedings. First, this ruling does not say that copying is lawful. It says the appeal court skipped a characterization the law requires. A well-built file can still win on the remittal, and a new claim can still win if the value is proved. Second, do not confuse this tort with a trademark action or with a contract action against a former distributor. The Epiphany case was pleaded as parasitisme, not as infringement of a registered mark. If you also own a French or European trademark, that is a separate right, with its own statute and its own proof of use. This article does not state the trademark articles in force, because the companion ruling of the same day applied an older wording of the Intellectual Property Code and cannot be cited as the current text. If the copycat is a company you appointed, the contract may give you termination, non-solicit and confidentiality remedies that do not depend on Article 1240. Use the contract if it helps. Do not assume it proves parasitism.

B. Why is profit from someone else’s copy not enough without personal acts?

The second Bulletin ruling of the same morning answers a question every foreign group asks once the French copy is traced: can we sue the company that benefited, the franchisor, the marketplace, the French holding company, or only the entity that actually printed the brochure and sold the product? Appeal no. 24-22.474 concerned a windscreen and glass network. The claimant, Sud gestion, sued a franchisee and the network company Actiglass for trademark infringement and for unfair competition. The Paris court of appeal held Actiglass liable for unfair competition because business cards edited and distributed by the franchisee had taken up Sud gestion’s graphic charter, colours and comic-book universe, creating confusion, and because those cards had been given to insurers who send customers, with a possibly false mention that a deductible was waived, disrupting the claimant’s network. The economic advantage and the confusion were real on those findings. They were still not enough.

The Cour de cassation judged the unfair-competition head on the current tort rule, not on the older trademark wording it used for the infringement head. In Cour de cassation, commercial chamber, 23 September 2026, appeal no. 24-22.474, also published in the Bulletin, the Court recalled Article 1240 and then drew the consequence: « Il en résulte que l’action en concurrence déloyale reposant sur une faute, son succès suppose rapportée la preuve, par celui qui s’en prétend victime, de l’accomplissement d’actes positifs et caractérisés du fait de la personne poursuivie pour qu’ils lui soient imputables. » An unfair-competition action rests on a fault. Success requires the victim to prove positive and characterized acts by the person sued, so that those acts can be imputed to that person. The Court then held that the appeal court had not given a legal basis to its decision « par des motifs impropres à établir la commission d’actes positifs et personnels par la société Actiglass ». Motifs that do not establish positive and personal acts by the company actually sued are legally insufficient. The condemnation of Actiglass for the unfair-competition loss, set at 6,000 euros in the quashed head, fell with that reasoning. The case goes back to the Versailles court of appeal on the quashed points.

Read that holding against the way international groups are organised. A French SAS, the simplified joint-stock company, or a SARL, the private limited company, may be the entity that printed the packaging, registered the domain, invoiced the customers and paid the advertising. The foreign parent may have approved the brand guidelines, received the margin, or celebrated the launch in a group newsletter. Approval, margin and celebration are not automatically positive acts of copying. They become relevant if you can show that the parent itself did something: it instructed the French company to reproduce the concept, it supplied the artwork, it paid the printer, it hosted the pages, it told the sales team to use the copied script. The Actiglass ruling is a warning against the convenient defendant. Suing the solvent parent because the operating company is thin, without proving the parent’s own acts, is the error that caused the cassation. Suing only the operating company, when the parent’s emails show the instruction, is the opposite error. Name each defendant against a specific act, dated and documented.

The same distinction protects you when you are the foreign company accused of copying. A French competitor may sue your French subsidiary and, in the same writ, your parent, a director who lives abroad, and a sister company that only distributes outside France. Article 1240, as applied on 23 September 2026, does not make every company in the group an author because the group gained. Ask, for each named defendant, what positive act is alleged: reproduction, publication, sale, instruction, or only a shareholding and a consolidated profit. A title, by itself, is not the positive act the Court required. If the writ names you personally, the claimant must still show your own fault. Do not ignore that writ. Failure to appear can have serious procedural consequences, which depend on how service was made. The personal-act test is a defence, not a reason to leave the summons unanswered.

Put the two rulings side by side before you draft the claim. From appeal no. 25-14.331 you take the content of the fault: an individualized economic value, fruit of know-how or of human and financial efforts, which cannot be deduced from being first. From appeal no. 24-22.474 you take the author of the fault: positive and personal acts by the person you sue, not a benefit drawn from someone else’s copy. A claim that has the value but names the wrong company fails the second test. A claim that names the right company but shows only a similar idea and an earlier launch date fails the first. French procedure will not let you repair both gaps by a vague reference to disloyalty. The court is not invited to sense that something unfair happened. It is invited to find a characterized fault under Article 1240, a loss, and a link. That is why the evidence section below is organised by value and by actor, not by indignation.

II. How do you sue in France and stop the copy while you live abroad?

A. Which court hears the claim, what is the deadline, and who must prove what?

The burden sits on the claimant, and it sits there twice. Article 9 of the Code of Civil Procedure provides that « Il incombe à chaque partie de prouver conformément à la loi les faits nécessaires au succès de sa prétention. » Each party must prove, in accordance with the law, the facts necessary for the success of its claim. Article 1353 of the Civil Code adds the substantive rule: « Celui qui réclame l’exécution d’une obligation doit la prouver. » The person who claims performance of an obligation must prove it. In a parasitism case the obligation is the duty to repair under Article 1240. You prove the value, the defendant’s positive acts, the loss, and the link between the acts and the loss. The defendant does not have to prove that its concept was born in a vacuum unless you have first made your proof. Screenshots taken on the morning you discovered the copy are a start. They are not the file the two rulings now require.

Subject-matter jurisdiction is set by the Commercial Code, and it is narrower than a foreign founder often assumes. Article L.721-3 of the Commercial Code, in the version in force since 1 January 2022 and still applicable on 24 September 2026, provides that « Les tribunaux de commerce connaissent : 1° Des contestations relatives aux engagements entre commerçants, entre artisans, entre établissements de crédit, entre sociétés de financement ou entre eux ; 2° De celles relatives aux sociétés commerciales ; 3° De celles relatives aux actes de commerce entre toutes personnes. » The tribunaux de commerce, the commercial courts, hear disputes relating to commitments between merchants, artisans, credit institutions and finance companies, disputes relating to commercial companies, and disputes relating to commercial acts between any persons. A foreign company that is itself a merchant, suing a French SAS or SARL over copying in the course of trade, will ordinarily aim at the tribunal de commerce under one of those heads. If the defendant is not a merchant, or if the dispute is not a commercial act, the tribunal judiciaire, the ordinary civil court, may be the right forum. Getting this wrong costs months. The Kbis, the official extract delivered by the greffe, the registry of the commercial court, shows the defendant’s legal form, its registered office and whether it is registered as a commercial company. Order a recent Kbis before the writ is drafted, and match the name on the writ to the name on the extract, including the liquidator if the company is in insolvency proceedings.

Territory is a separate question, and it is the one that matters when you live abroad. Article 42 of the Code of Civil Procedure states that « La juridiction territorialement compétente est, sauf disposition contraire, celle du lieu où demeure le défendeur. S’il y a plusieurs défendeurs, le demandeur saisit, à son choix, la juridiction du lieu où demeure l’un d’eux. » The territorially competent court is, unless otherwise provided, the court of the place where the defendant lives. If there are several defendants, the claimant may choose the court of the place where one of them lives. For a company, that place is its registered office. Because unfair competition is a tort, Article 46 of the Code of Civil Procedure adds a choice: the claimant may also sue « en matière délictuelle, la juridiction du lieu du fait dommageable ou celle dans le ressort de laquelle le dommage a été subi », that is, in tort, the court of the place of the harmful act or the court in whose district the damage was suffered. A website aimed at French customers, a sale in a named French city, or a trade fair in Paris can therefore matter, but only if you can tie the act or the damage to that place with evidence, not with a hypothesis. If the copycat is not domiciled in France, a different jurisdiction analysis applies and must be checked before you sue. This article deals with the usual case: a French-based company doing the copying.

Where that registered office is in Paris or elsewhere in Île-de-France, the same articles do the local work. The Kbis will show a Paris siège, or a siège in Hauts-de-Seine, Seine-Saint-Denis, Val-de-Marne, Seine-et-Marne, Yvelines, Essonne or Val-d’Oise. Article 42 then points to the commercially competent court of that place, and Article 46 may point there as well if the harmful act or the damage is in that district. There is no separate Paris procedure for a foreign claimant, and no shorter Paris deadline. What changes in practice is the logistics: the writ, called an assignation, is served by a commissaire de justice, the French enforcement officer, on the defendant at the address on the Kbis; your French avocat, the lawyer who has rights of audience, files it; and you do not need to travel for the issue of the claim. Hearings can require a local representative even when you attend by video where the court allows it. Build the Paris or Île-de-France file as you would any other: Kbis less than three months old if the court asks for freshness, a French translation of the foreign documents you rely on, and a power of attorney that matches the company name on your own registration extract. If you have not yet chosen the French vehicle that will sue, the comparison between a SAS, a SARL, a subsidiary and a branch is set out in our guide to choosing a SAS, a SARL, a subsidiary or a branch from abroad. The entity that spent the money should be the claimant, or should be joined, because appeal no. 25-14.331 requires the value to be that of the persons who claim.

The clock is five years, and it starts when you knew or should have known, not when you feel ready to sue. Article 2224 of the Civil Code provides that « Les actions personnelles ou mobilières se prescrivent par cinq ans à compter du jour où le titulaire d’un droit a connu ou aurait dû connaître les faits lui permettant de l’exercer. » Personal and movable actions are time-barred after five years from the day the holder of the right knew or ought to have known the facts allowing the right to be exercised. A claim under Article 1240 is a personal action. The five years therefore run from knowledge of the copying, or from the date you ought to have known: a trade fair you attended, a customer email you ignored, a French website that was public. Do not assume that each new invoice restarts the period. This article does not state a continuing-tort exception, because the rulings of 23 September 2026 do not create one. Diary the first dated proof of knowledge, and issue proceedings before that anniversary. Waiting while you negotiate a licence can be commercially sensible. It is legally dangerous if nobody has interrupted the period by a writ or by another act the Civil Code recognises. A letter that merely complains, without a procedural effect, should not be treated as a pause button.

Representation is not optional once the financial stake is real. Article 853 of the Code of Civil Procedure provides that « Les parties sont, sauf disposition contraire, tenues de constituer avocat devant le tribunal de commerce. » The parties must, unless otherwise provided, instruct an avocat before the commercial court. The same article dispenses with that obligation in cases provided by statute or regulation, when the claim is for an amount less than or equal to 10,000 euros, or arises from performance of an obligation not exceeding 10,000 euros, in insolvency proceedings under Book VI of the Commercial Code, and in disputes about the keeping of the trade and companies register. A parasitism claim that seeks a real injunction and damages above that threshold does not fall into the small-claim exception. From abroad, you instruct the avocat in writing, you send the evidence file, and the avocat signs the writ. You do not serve the writ yourself. If the copycat is a former employee rather than a rival company, the employment path is different: our notes on hiring the first employee in France and on dismissing that employee from abroad deal with the contract and the labour court. Those steps do not prove parasitisme against the new employer. The new employer is sued, if at all, under Article 1240, with the personal-act test of appeal no. 24-22.474.

B. What urgent order can you seek, and which documents survive the new test?

Speed and proof are not the same procedure. Before the trial on the merits, French law lets you preserve evidence if you have a legitimate reason. Article 145 of the Code of Civil Procedure provides that « S’il existe un motif légitime de conserver ou d’établir avant tout procès la preuve de faits dont pourrait dépendre la solution d’un litige, les mesures d’instruction légalement admissibles peuvent être ordonnées à la demande de tout intéressé, sur requête ou en référé. » If there is a legitimate reason to preserve or establish, before any trial, proof of facts on which the outcome of a dispute may depend, legally admissible investigative measures may be ordered at the request of any interested person, on a petition or in summary proceedings. The territorially competent court is, at the claimant’s choice, the court that would hear the merits or the court in whose district the measure must be carried out. For a foreign company, this is often the first useful step: a court-authorised report of the website, the packaging on a shop shelf, or the stand at a fair, taken by a commissaire de justice while the pages are still online. A screenshot you took yourself can be challenged. A bailiff’s report ordered under Article 145 is harder to brush aside. Ask for it as soon as you have a legitimate reason, which the two rulings help you define: you need to capture the elements that show both the copied value and the identity of the company that published them.

Urgent measures on the substance of the dispute go to the president of the commercial court, within that court’s jurisdiction. Article 872 of the Code of Civil Procedure provides that « Dans tous les cas d’urgence, le président du tribunal de commerce peut, dans les limites de la compétence du tribunal, ordonner en référé toutes les mesures qui ne se heurtent à aucune contestation sérieuse ou que justifie l’existence d’un différend. » In all urgent cases, the president of the commercial court may, within the limits of the court’s jurisdiction, order in summary proceedings any measure that faces no serious challenge, or that is justified by the existence of a dispute. Article 873 of the Code of Civil Procedure goes further: « Le président peut, dans les mêmes limites, et même en présence d’une contestation sérieuse, prescrire en référé les mesures conservatoires ou de remise en état qui s’imposent, soit pour prévenir un dommage imminent, soit pour faire cesser un trouble manifestement illicite. » Even if there is a serious challenge, the president may prescribe the conservatory measures or the restoration measures required either to prevent imminent harm or to stop a manifestly unlawful disturbance. The same article allows a provision, an interim payment, or an order to perform, where the obligation is not seriously disputable. After 23 September 2026, do not tell the president that the disturbance is manifest merely because you sold first. A serious dispute about whether an individualized value exists is exactly what appeal no. 25-14.331 describes. The référé judge can still stop a manifest copy and preserve evidence. The judge will not treat priority of commercialization as a substitute for the value, and will not enjoin a parent company whose own acts are not shown.

What, then, belongs in the bundle you send from abroad? Start with identity. A Kbis of the defendant, and your own registration extract, translated if it is not in French, so the court sees who spent the money and who did the acts. Then the value, organised under the words of appeal no. 25-14.331: know-how, human effort, financial effort, acquired reputation, investments. Contracts with designers, licences, invoices, payroll extracts, advertising orders, and a one-page table that adds those costs and ties each cost to a visible element of the concept. Then the acts, organised under appeal no. 24-22.474: for each defendant, the positive act, the date, and the document. A purchase of the product in France, with the invoice showing the seller’s company name. A bailiff’s report of the website, showing the legal notices, the mentions légales, that name the publisher. Emails in which that company sent the copied visuals to a printer or to a retailer. Do not staple the foreign parent’s consolidated accounts and call that an act. Then the loss: diverted orders, a drop in French sales after the copy launched, price erosion, the cost of a corrective campaign. A round number chosen because the Epiphany case mentioned 200,000 euros is not a method. That figure was quashed. Your figure must be your loss, with a causal sentence a judge can follow.

A few documents are regularly missing when the client is abroad, and each missing document maps onto a failed condition. The first is a dated capture. If the only proof of the website is a link that now shows a different page, you cannot prove the act. Article 145 exists for that reason. The second is a translation. A French commercial court works in French. An English brand book that is not translated will not characterize know-how for a judge who cannot read it. The third is the chain of title inside the group. If the US parent designed the concept and the French SAS only sells it, decide before the writ who holds the value. Joining both, with a short explanation of who paid what, is often cleaner than a late application to add a party. The fourth is the employment file, if a former salesperson left with the concept. Keep that file for the labour court if you dismiss or if you enforce a contractual clause you have actually checked. Do not paste it into the commercial writ as if a departure were itself parasitism. The fifth is the service address. Article 42 and the Kbis must match. Serving a trading name, or an old office you found on a website, is how foreign claimants lose the first three months.

Once the writ is served, the case follows the ordinary commercial track unless you are in référé. You will be asked for written submissions, pièces numérotées, a numbered bundle, and a timetable. From abroad, the workable method is a single evidence room your avocat can update, with French file names, a chronology, and a witness who can speak to the investments if the court wants oral explanation. You do not have to relocate. You do have to answer on time. A claimant who proves the value and the acts still has to prove the loss. Article 1240 repairs harm that happened, it does not award a tariff for displeasure. If the French company you sue is itself in difficulty, factor enforcement in from the start: an order against an empty SAS is a paper win. That is a reason to investigate, before you sue, which company did the positive acts and which company has assets in France, not a reason to name every affiliate and hope. The 23 September 2026 rulings reward that discipline. They punish the file that asks the court to infer value from a launch date and authorship from a group chart.

Conclusion

A copied concept in France is actionable when, and only when, you can satisfy Article 1240 as the Cour de cassation applied it on 23 September 2026. Appeal no. 25-14.331, published in the Bulletin, requires an identified and individualized economic value, the fruit of know-how or of human and financial efforts, and it forbids the court from deducing that value from the mere fact that you commercialized the concept earlier. Appeal no. 24-22.474, published the same day, requires positive and personal acts by the company you sue. Benefit, confusion caused by someone else’s brochure, and a place in the group structure are not that proof. Around those holdings, the procedure is ordinary French procedure, usable from abroad if it is prepared. The commercial court of the defendant’s registered office, or the court of the harmful act or of the damage, hears a dispute that falls under Article L.721-3. The claimant proves the facts under Articles 9 and 1353. The personal action is barred five years after knowledge under Article 2224. An avocat is required before the commercial court unless a listed exception applies, including a money claim of 10,000 euros or less. Evidence can be preserved under Article 145, and urgent measures can be sought from the president under Articles 872 and 873, without pretending that priority of sale makes the disturbance manifest.

If your competitor’s siège is in Paris or in the rest of Île-de-France, those same articles point to the local commercial court and to its president for urgent measures. The Kbis from the greffe is the document that fixes the name and the address. The bundle that survives the new test is the one that separates value from idea, and actor from beneficiary. Start the bailiff’s capture while the pages are online, translate the contracts that show what you spent, and do not wait for the fifth anniversary of the email in which a French customer first sent you the copy. The rulings do not close the courthouse to foreign companies. They close it to files that ask a judge to feel the unfairness instead of finding the fault.

Need a quick opinion on your case?

A lawyer of the firm can review the copy, the Kbis and the investment file with you by telephone within 48 hours, including where the competitor is in Paris or elsewhere in Île-de-France. Telephone consultation: 80 EUR TTC. Call +33 6 46 60 58 22 or write through the contact page with the dated capture, the defendant’s extract and a short note of what you spent, and you will receive a clear view of the court, the deadline and the gaps in proof before any writ is issued.