Glossary
French: titulaire
The titulaire (roughly tee-too-LEHR) is the owner (proprietor) of a trademark. The owner can be a natural person or a legal entity, and a single mark can have one or several owners — co-ownership is possible, as in US practice.
The owner of a mark can change over time. Under French law, a change of ownership must be recorded with the INPI to be enforceable against third parties (opposable aux tiers) — the same principle as recording assignments with the USPTO, and just as easy to overlook in M&A follow-up. To change the owner of a French mark, the assignment agreement is recorded so that the INPI updates its database and publishes the change of proprietor in the BOPI, the official bulletin. Until recordal happens, the register still shows the old owner, and third parties dealing in good faith with the recorded owner are protected — which is why an unrecorded assignment can undermine an infringement or opposition action brought by the true new owner before the change catches up in the database.
Because rights are registration-based, French and EU procedure generally requires the party bringing an opposition, a revocation action or an infringement suit to be the mark’s owner as recorded at the relevant office, not merely the beneficial or economic owner. A US parent company that holds French marks through a local subsidiary, or that recently acquired a portfolio but has not yet recorded the transfer, can find its standing challenged on a technicality that has nothing to do with the merits of its case — one more reason recordal should be treated as time-sensitive, not administrative housekeeping to get to eventually.
One can be the owner of a trademark application (dépôt de marque) or of a trademark registration (enregistrement de marque) — ownership exists from filing, before registration issues. The applicant (déposant) becomes the owner of the mark; note that French records historically distinguish the original applicant from the current owner, while the EUIPO database uses only “owner.”
US practice ties ownership closely to use: the owner is generally whoever controls the nature and quality of the goods sold under the mark, and an assignment made “in gross” (without the associated goodwill) can be void. French and EU practice is more formal and register-driven: the owner is whoever the INPI or EUIPO records show, and an assignment is valid between the parties from signature regardless of use, though — as above — it only binds third parties once recorded. A US-style naked license or ownership dispute turning on control of quality has no direct French counterpart; the closer French battleground is simply whether the assignment or recordal was done correctly.
A US company acquires a European competitor and, with it, a portfolio of French and EU marks. If the share purchase agreement transfers the marks but the buyer never records the change with the INPI and EUIPO, the seller remains the owner of record — meaning renewal notices, opposition deadlines and monitoring alerts keep going to the seller (or nowhere at all), and the buyer may be unable to bring an opposition or a lawsuit in its own name until the recordal is completed.
Ownership questions surface at every stage: at filing (see trademark filing and applicant), at renewal (see trademark renewal), and whenever a portfolio changes hands (see trademark assignment recordal). Portfolio housekeeping — verifying that recorded owners match current corporate reality before renewals, oppositions or litigation — is a recurring task for foreign owners of French marks; see contact us for recordal assistance.