A slogan that does not pass: “The police speak to you every day on BFMTV”. A display installed in Ollioules, in the Var had first been condemned. The well-known Michel-Ange Flori was attacked by BFMTV for having denigrated the channel on advertising posters by using his logo. He has just been dismissed on appeal.
Convicted in summary proceedings in June 2019 for two public posters bearing the slogan “The police speak to you every day on BFMTV”, a Var displayer was cleared during the trial on the merits, even obtaining the conviction of the news channel.
The Marseilles court dismissed BFMTV’s claims and ordered the channel to pay the costs and to pay Michel-Ange Flori 10,000 euros for the costs of the proceedings.
He accompanied his decision with a provisional execution, “given the seniority of the case”.
The problematic poster, due to the presence of the logo of the BFMTV television channel. • © France 3 Toulon
He had been ordered to pay 32,000 euros to the channel as a provision for the damage suffered in 2019. According to the court, this slogan constituted “a demeaning message, which certainly damages the image of BFMTV (…), the freedom of parody or caricature not being applicable to trademark law”, made this order.
Judging this time on the merits, the Marseilles court made another analysis, finding that BFMTV “acts on the basis of infringement of its mark“and that the defendant must have obtained”an economic advantage” for the infringement to be constituted.
The publicist”did not derive any gain or economic benefit” of the distribution of this poster, he believes.
“Michelangelo Flori acted for the purpose of information, even if it was polemical”says the judgement.
This poster is indeed part of the context of the social movement known as yellow vests and aims to criticize the continuous information media and especially the BFMTV channel.
Court judgment
AFP.
Michelangelo Flori is a regular in the courts. Operating until 2016 400 billboards in the Var, he kept two of these billboards, in the towns of Toulon and La-Seyne-sur-Mer, which he had been using since 1999 for his personal communication, with parody messages and posters.
In December, this 64-year-old man from Var had also been cleared by the Court of Cassation for two posters which caricatured Emmanuel Macron as Hitler or Pétain.
The court found that he had “not exceeded the permissible limits of freedom of expression”. At first instance and on appeal he was convicted of “public insultsto the President of the Republic.
His last posting:
On the BFM affair, Michel-Ange Flori announced to AFP that he would immediately republish this same poster on his two personal communication panels, accompanied by the mention of
the condemnation of BFMTV.
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