IT landscape in France
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Legal environment
 

To help enforce legislative action for all fraudulent activities related to IT, the French governement has created in May 2000 the Office Central de Lutte contre la Criminalite liee aux Technologies de l'Information et de la Communication. The office collaborates with traditionnal law enforcement authorities by providing technical expertise.
 

Since 1973, European legislation (Munich convention) has excluded software from patent law, arguing that software is more an intangible products than an industrial one. In France, software are protected by copyright laws. Yet in current jurisdiction, patents have bee awarded when technical components are an important part of software. Thus there is a conflict between the law and its application and active debate to decide whether or not the current legislative system should be modified. European firms think they have a competitive disadvantage compared to US firms which are being offered patents for any innovation, whether it is a new commercial process online or a new method for online stock evaluation.
  Piracy rate is the volume of software pirated as a percentage of total software installed in each country. According to the last BSA Piracy study, piracy rate in France was 40 % in year 2000, from 51 % in 1995. Yet France is still above the European average of 34 %.
  Since October 1998, ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) is in charge of global domain names administration. France is one of the 18 member states participating in ICANN activity. At the country level, GFSI (groupe francais pour les standards de l’Internet) is an informal group of ISOC Internet society created in 1997.
For IP addresses, three regional entities have been created, among them Ripe NCC for Europe and North Africa. As for local domain names administration, the AFNIC (Association Francaise pour le nommage Internet en Cooperation) is in charge of the .fr domain name.
The AFNIC allocates adresses and manages them for ICANN. In July 2000, 90 000 .fr domain names have been registered.
  Trademarks have to be registered at the INPI (Institut National de la Propriete Intellectuelle) and domain names at AFNIC. If a domain name has been illegally appropriated (cyber-squatting), a legal procedure can be taken under French law (even if the cyber-squatter is not a French resident) or under international administrative jurisdiction (ICANN/OMPI).
  In 2000, more than 17000 patents have been registered in France. It is worth noting the increase in demand for European patents, 6800 in 2000, to protect French companies on a European scale. International patents for French companies in 2000 have remained stable to 3601 files. International market for patents is still dominated by the US (42%), Germany (13.2%) and Japan (10.3%). UK represents 6.1% and France 4%.
  Since March 2000, France has adopted a digital signature law. Digital signature is now accepted as legally binding. The French government is promoting the use of digital signature, by asking large companies to pay the value-added tax online or by promoting its use in health care (see Government policies).
Verisign is the technology used to enforce digital signature with Public Key Infrastructure, and two major companies provide Verisign technology: Thwate (59.3 % market share) and Certplus (32.2 % market share).


Sources
 
  • Internet.gouv.fr
  • ART telecom
  • Piracy study, BSA

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