BC Law IPTF Blog

Familiar with the perfume Dune? 

It appears Dior’s uber-fragrance (popular in the 90’s, I believe) was at the center of a recent legal battle in France when Nejla Bsiri-Barbir, a former nose* with Haarman & Reimer, sued the fragrance compounding house.  In her bid for the continuation of royalties received while employed with H&R, Ms. Bsiri-Barbir claimed to be the perfume’s “creator.”

This past June, the highest court in France ruled against Ms. Bsiri-Barbir, finding that perfume is not art and therefore could not be protected like a “work of the mind.”  

Oddly enough, this latest ruling was in total opposition to a decision made earlier this year by a French court of appeals.  There, the court found a Belgium company, Bellure, guilty of producing counterfeits of L’Oreal perfumes and ordered that damages be paid.

What I found most intriguing is that, unlike a ruling by the US Supreme Court, this recent decision of the French high court would not trump the previous verdict of the court of appeals.  

That both rulings hold only complicates the situation for the experts of the olfactory industry.

* nose: a perfumer.

 http://select.nytimes.com/search/restricted/article?res=F00B10F73A540C708DDDAE0894DE404482 

Note: Ms. Bsiri-Barbir was fired from H&R in 1999.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 28th, 2006 at 10:07 pm and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.