By a judgment dated 18 December 2025, the Tribunal judiciaire de Lille ruled on a dispute relating to the protection of a lace design and the conditions under which its reproduction may constitute copyright infringement.
The case opposed Dentelle Sophie Hallette, a French company operating in the lace and textile sector, to Stokomani and its supplier Daliaclose Lingerie, which were accused of having manufactured and marketed lingerie products reproducing a protected design without authorisation.
Dentelle Sophie Hallette claimed ownership of copyright in a lace design identified as model [P], created in 2012. The company alleged that several lingerie products sold by Stokomani and supplied by Daliaclose reproduced the essential features of this design.
Following court-authorised seizure operations (saisie-contrefaçon), which made it possible to identify the infringing products and their distribution chain, Dentelle Sophie Hallette brought proceedings before the Lille Judicial Court on the grounds of:
The defendants contested both the originality of the design and the existence of any compensable damage.
The Court first recalled the legal framework set out in Article L.111-1 of the French Intellectual Property Code, under which copyright protection arises when a work reflects the author’s personal creative choices.
In fields such as lace and textile design, where recurrent motifs and technical constraints are common, originality cannot be excluded solely because certain elements belong to a shared visual vocabulary. What matters is the specific combination of those elements and the freedom exercised in their arrangement.
In this case, the Court found that the disputed design was characterised by:
Taken together, these elements reflected a genuine creative effort. The Court therefore held that the design met the originality requirement and was eligible for copyright protection.
Having recognised the originality of the design, the Court examined whether the defendants’ products constituted an infringement.
It found that the lingerie items marketed by the defendants reproduced the essential characteristics of the protected design, without any meaningful modification or independent creative contribution.
The seizure reports, purchase records and commercial documentation submitted to the Court established both the manufacture and the marketing of the infringing products.
The Court therefore concluded that the defendants had committed acts of copyright infringement within the meaning of Article L.122-4 of the French Intellectual Property Code.
In addition to copyright infringement, the claimant relied on unfair competition and parasitism.
The Court recalled that such claims require the existence of wrongful conduct distinct from the infringement itself. In the absence of separate acts such as market disruption, misleading practices or independent appropriation of economic value, these claims cannot succeed.
In the present case, the alleged acts were strictly identical to those relied upon in support of the infringement claim. The Court therefore dismissed the claims based on unfair competition and parasitism.
With regard to damages, the Court applied Article L.331-1-3 of the French Intellectual Property Code, which requires compensation to be based on objective and substantiated elements.
Rejecting speculative calculations based on projected sales volumes, the Court relied on:
It awarded:
The Court also ordered:
This decision provides a clear and rigorous illustration of the conditions under which a lace design may benefit from copyright protection under French law.
It confirms that:
The judgment also forms part of a consistent line of decisions rendered in favour of Dentelle Sophie Hallette, confirming the robustness of the legal protection afforded to its designs and the courts’ strict approach to unauthorised reproductions.
