Infringement Analysis in Bordeaux.

A patent infringement analysis Bordeaux rights holders commission is written in the Gironde but read in Paris. The technology is here — the aerospace and defence primes on the Bordeaux Aéroparc, the photonics companies of the Route des Lasers, the agritech and wine-tech firms of Nouvelle-Aquitaine — but the courtroom that decides whether a French patent is infringed is 500 kilometres away, and it is the only one in the country allowed to hear the case. That single fact reshapes how an infringement study for a Bordeaux patentee should be built, because the audience for it is a specialist Paris bench and, increasingly, the Unified Patent Court sitting a few streets away.

Why a patent infringement analysis Bordeaux matter is decided in Paris

Start with jurisdiction, because it is the fact that catches Bordeaux inventors out most often. The Tribunal judiciaire de Paris holds exclusive nationwide jurisdiction over patent infringement and validity. A company in Mérignac suing a competitor in Toulouse does not litigate in Bordeaux, Lyon or anywhere else — the case goes to Paris, and specifically to the court’s third chamber, which is subdivided into sections that hear nothing but patents.

This concentration is deliberate. France funnels every national patent dispute through one building so that a small pool of judges builds genuine technical fluency. For a rights holder it means predictability, but it also raises the bar. A patent infringement analysis Bordeaux counsel files in support of proceedings is read by people who see claim construction every week and will not be impressed by an argument that skates over the wording of the claims.

Since 1 April 2020 the picture has a second layer. The PACTE law gave the INPI its own power to revoke granted French patents through opposition, so validity is now shared between the Paris court and the office in Paris that granted the patent. An infringement study that ignores how vulnerable the asserted claims are to an INPI opposition or a Paris nullity counterclaim is only telling half the story.

The saisie-contrefaçon: France’s evidence-seizure weapon

The single most powerful tool in French patent enforcement is the saisie-contrefaçon, and any credible infringement assessment for a Bordeaux client has to be built with it in mind. It is a court-authorised evidence seizure, grounded in Article L.615-5 of the Intellectual Property Code, and it has no real equivalent in common-law systems.

The mechanism is striking. The patentee applies ex parte — without warning the other side — to the presiding judge, who can authorise a bailiff to enter the suspected infringer’s premises and either describe or physically seize the allegedly infringing products, the machines that make them, and the documents proving the infringement’s origin, extent and volume. Roughly four in five French patent infringement actions open this way, before the defendant knows a dispute exists.

That timing changes everything about the analysis. The seizure application must be drafted before the raid, which means the technical infringement theory has to be substantially complete beforehand. A rushed or over-broad request can be annulled, and the seizure must be followed by proceedings on the merits within a short statutory window or it collapses. We build the claim-mapping work so it doubles as the technical backbone of a saisie request the moment a Bordeaux client decides to move.

INPI, PACTE oppositions and the two-track validity attack

The Institut national de la propriété industrielle grants French patents and, since the PACTE reforms, is also where their validity can be tested short of full litigation. Any third party except the patent owner may file an opposition against a French patent granted on or after 1 April 2020, within nine months of grant, on grounds of unpatentability, insufficient disclosure or added matter.

For a Bordeaux patentee this cuts both ways. If you are the one asserting a patent, you should assume a well-advised defendant will hit back on validity — either through an INPI opposition, if the window is open, or through a nullity counterclaim in the Paris court, where validity is decided in the same proceedings as infringement. A patent infringement analysis Bordeaux companies rely on therefore has to stress-test the claims against the prior art, not just against the accused product.

The INPI route also matters because it feeds appeals into the Paris Court of Appeal, the same appellate court that reviews the Tribunal judiciaire’s patent judgments. That alignment means the legal standards applied to validity are consistent whether the fight starts at the office or in the court, and an analysis can be written once to serve either forum.

The UPC in Paris: unitary patents, opt-outs and forum choice

France is a founding Unified Patent Court state, and the UPC gives a Bordeaux rights holder a second, parallel venue that a purely national analysis would miss. Paris hosts one of the three seats of the UPC Central Division and, separately, a UPC Local Division — so both types of first-instance proceeding can be brought in the same city that already monopolises national patent litigation.

The choice of forum is now a strategic decision that belongs inside the infringement analysis itself. A European patent with unitary effect is enforced at the UPC across all participating states at once. A classical European patent validated in France can be litigated either at the UPC or, if its owner has filed an opt-out during the transitional period, only before the national Paris court. Which right you hold, and whether it has been opted out, determines where a Bordeaux company’s infringement case can even be heard.

The Paris Central Division seat handles subject matter that maps almost perfectly onto the Gironde economy — physics and electricity, including optics, electronics and telecommunications, alongside mechanical and transport technologies. For a laser or photonics firm, or an aerospace supplier, the venue that will read the claims is a short walk from the national court, and the analysis should be framed for both.

What Bordeaux’s industries actually put at risk

Nouvelle-Aquitaine is the third-largest French region for aeronautics, space and defence employment, and Bordeaux sits at its centre. ArianeGroup builds strategic and launcher propulsion at Saint-Médard-en-Jalles, Dassault Aviation runs its Mérignac site, and Thales, Safran and Stelia cluster around the Bordeaux Aéroparc. These are patent-dense, secrecy-sensitive businesses where an infringement dispute can collide with defence-classification and export-control constraints — factors that shape what a saisie-contrefaçon can lawfully seize.

Then there is the Route des Lasers, now the ALPHA-RLH photonics and microwave cluster, which makes Bordeaux one of Europe’s densest concentrations of optics expertise and generates a large share of France’s photonics turnover. Anchored by the CEA-CESTA Laser Mégajoule programme at Le Barp and the Institut d’Optique campus, this ecosystem produces exactly the fast-moving, component-level inventions where a patent infringement analysis Bordeaux firms order has to resolve fine questions of claim scope in optics and electronics.

Agritech, viticulture technology and digital round out the map. Wine is Bordeaux’s global signature, and the sensors, spraying systems, fermentation controls and precision-agriculture tools built around it are increasingly patented. A patent infringement analysis Bordeaux vineyards and equipment makers need is often as much about mechanical and software claims as about the chemistry, and each maps to a different UPC Central Division section.

How we build the infringement analysis, claim by claim

The core of any infringement study is the claim chart: each element of each asserted claim placed side by side with the corresponding feature of the accused product or process, with cited evidence. For a Paris court or the UPC, this is not a formality — it is the document the judges interrogate, so every mapping has to be defensible against a construction the other side will contest.

French law adds a dimension that a literal reading misses. The courts apply a doctrine of equivalents, so a product that avoids the literal wording of a claim can still infringe if it uses a means performing the same function to achieve the same result. A robust patent infringement analysis Bordeaux counsel can act on therefore tests both literal infringement and equivalence, and flags where the equivalents argument is strong or exposed.

We also run the analysis in reverse for defendants. If a Bordeaux company has been threatened or served, the same claim-charting discipline drives a non-infringement and invalidity position, feeding a nullity counterclaim in Paris or an INPI opposition. Pairing the study with a prior art & litigation search turns a defensive posture into an active attack on the patent’s validity.

Timing, limitation periods and damages for Bordeaux rights holders

French patent infringement claims carry a five-year limitation period, running from the day the rights holder knew or should have known the last fact enabling the action. Damages are likewise recoverable for the five years preceding suit. Because the clock turns on knowledge, a Bordeaux company that has been quietly monitoring a competitor needs to be careful not to let the evidence of awareness undercut its own recovery window.

Sequencing matters just as much. The saisie-contrefaçon comes first and is time-critical; the merits action must follow within the statutory deadline; and if a validity attack looks likely, the decision whether to pre-empt it — or to strengthen the patent through central limitation — belongs early in the strategy. An infringement analysis that arrives after these decisions have been made is worth far less than one that informs them.

For European patents there is the added question of the UPC’s own limitation and opt-out timing. A misjudged opt-out, or a failure to opt back in, can close a forum entirely. We treat these deadlines as part of the analysis rather than as afterthoughts, so a Bordeaux rights holder sees the whole enforcement clock at once.

How we work with Bordeaux attorneys and R&D teams

Most of our Nouvelle-Aquitaine work arrives in one of two forms: a rights holder who suspects a competitor is infringing and wants a defensible study before committing to a saisie, or a company that has just been served and needs a non-infringement and validity position at speed. Both start with the same rigorous claim-mapping, and both are built to be read by a Paris or UPC bench rather than filed and forgotten.

We work directly alongside French patent attorneys and litigation counsel, supplying the technical analysis, claim charts and evidence mapping that support their pleadings, saisie applications and expert submissions. Where a matter shades into a validity fight we tie the work to patent invalidation so the infringement and nullity threads move together rather than in sequence.

Bordeaux sits in the Central European working day, so a question raised by a Gironde attorney in the afternoon is generally answered before the next morning, and matters coordinated with US or Asian counsel land inside a single business cycle. Where a deadline is running — a seizure window, a merits filing, an opposition term — we prioritise the analysis needed to meet it and follow with the remainder.

IP Landscape & Resources in Bordeaux

Key intellectual-property authorities and venues relevant to Bordeaux:

• INPI — Institut national de la propriété industrielle — grants French patents and, since the PACTE law, hears post-grant oppositions that can revoke them
• Tribunal judiciaire de Paris — the court with exclusive nationwide jurisdiction over French patent infringement and validity
• Unified Patent Court (UPC) — hosts a Central Division seat and a Local Division in Paris for unitary and European patents
• European Patent Office (EPO) — grants the European patents that are validated in France or given unitary effect

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