The use of the terms corresponding to the name of the competitor may have been considered to constitute an unlawful interference by a ruling of an urgent applications judge (the terms disappeared after that ruling) but cannot be considered to constitute an act of unfair competition or parasitism: “on one hand, this use is not likely to cause confusion for the consumer, who is perfectly capable of reading the respective sites to distinguish between an aero-club-type association and a commercial company specialising in flight training”, on the other hand, the plaintiff “does not justify having invested in making himself known”.
If, on the basis of parasitism, the court’s reasoning is entirely justifiable, one may wonder about its reasoning regarding unfair competition. The use of the competitor’s name may constitute a wrongdoing, and the resulting harm to the plaintiff is that any Internet users who would otherwise have visited the site, have instead gone to the competitor. Is the fact that these Internet users could have realised that this was not the site they searched for relevant to conclude that there was no likelihood of confusion, or only that there is no damage other than symbolic?
