Wine Law

13 3.2. Towards a Middle Path Regarding Sponsorship? Regarding sponsorship, there has been a recent decision pertaining to a festival for which the billboard was showing the name of the Brasseries Kronenbourg 46 , leading to an exciting breakthrough in the dichotomy between sponsorship (not allowed) and corporate philanthropy (allowed). The Court held that, in this case, it was not a sponsorship because the Brasseries Kronenbourg did not pay for their visibility and the company only appears as a commercial partner since the festival actually bought the bears from them. Besides, it is not the trademark that appears in the billboard but the institutional denomination. The ANPAA declared that it appealed this decision 47 . Similar reasoning applied in another case related to the Cannes Festival confirmed by the Court of Appeal of Paris 48 . It was held that the ANPAA failed to prove that presenting Barons Philippe De Rothschild (and other) as official providers of the Cannes Festival was doing illegal sponsorship because the counterpart of providing alcohol was (at least apparently) a real remuneration and the visibility was benefiting to the companies and not to the trademarks. It thus seems that there is an interesting fine line between official partners and official providers. From the reasoning of the decision, it is advised to ensure that: 46 TGI Paris, 24 May 2017, no. 14/14261. 47 Source: https://www.anpaa.asso.fr/presse/espace-presse/956-decisions-2017-publicites-alcool-bilan-positif- combat-continue. 48 TGI Paris, 8 June 2017, no. 14/10059, and CA Paris, 9 May 2019, no. 17/14362.