Wine Law

310 WINE LAW 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:  the website of the event makes a clear distinction between the partners (sponsors) and the providers;  the visibility of the providers is limited to the companies’ names;  the visibility of the partners is more important than the visibility of the providers;  no advertising material is provided by the company for the event; and  the hypertext link on the event’s website leads to the institutional website of the company and contains a health warning message. Although the recent case law leaves some areas to explore as far as indirect advertising and sponsorship are concerned, there seems to be always more restriction on the media allowed. 48 TGI Paris, 8 June 2017, no. 14/10059, and CA Paris, 9 May 2019, no. 17/14362.