Glossary
French: marque
A trademark (marque) is a distinctive sign capable of indicating the origin of goods and services. That short definition contains the two pillars of the concept, in France as in the United States: the sign must be distinctive, and its legal function is to identify a single commercial source, allowing consumers to attribute goods and services to one undertaking and to repeat a purchasing experience.
In French practice, a trademark is composed of two elements: a sign (a word, logo, color, sound or even motion) and a list of goods and services organized in the classes of the Nice Classification, which spans 45 classes in total (goods in classes 1 through 34, services in classes 35 through 45). Protection is confined to those goods and services under the principle of specialty — a French or EU mark for software does not, by itself, block a later mark with the same name for unrelated goods such as furniture, absent a reputation-based claim.
In the United States, trademark rights arise from use in commerce. In France and the EU, rights arise from registration with the INPI or the EUIPO: first-to-file, no specimens, no declarations of use. Registration lasts ten years from filing and is renewable indefinitely (see trademark renewal) — subject to actual use once the mark is more than five years old, on pain of revocation for non-use.
That single difference explains why a US brand owner cannot rely on the intuitions built up under the Lanham Act: there is no French or EU equivalent of common-law trademark rights arising simply from selling under a name, no intent-to-use filing basis, and no specimen of use to submit at filing. It also explains why the register itself is more crowded and more contested in practice — since anyone can obtain a registration without proving a real business behind it (at least for the first five years), clearance searches and oppositions do more of the work that use-based evidence does in the United States.
A US company that has sold a product under a given name in the United States for years, without ever registering it there or abroad, has no automatic right to that name in France — arriving second to file, even against a French mark registered only months earlier and never yet used commercially, generally arrives too late. This is the single most common and most costly misunderstanding US companies bring to the French and EU markets.
Every other entry in this glossary refines some aspect of this one. For the practical sequence US companies follow, see choosing a trademark, then a trademark clearance search, then French trademark registration and/or EU trademark registration, then ongoing trademark watch and enforcement. See also: trademark law, distinctive sign.