In France: from individual to professional action

This page is also available in: EN FR, the original version being the French version.

Reusable court decisions

A good court decision is one whose arguments can be used on other occasions. From 2006 to 2011, more than 30 decisions have been issued by small-court jurisdictions on hardware-software bundling in France (see complete list of decisions, in French).

Among these, from 2009 to 2012, several small-court decisions have been strongly argumented by the judge and provide firm ground for further decisions.

2006-2011: individual actions and racketware team

• From 2006 to 2008, several individual consumers went to court independently in France, most often with successfully.
• From mid-2008 to 2010, many consumers used the Guide published by the Racketware team in France and went to court with some unformal advice.
• Meanwhile, most manufacturers started hiring high level professionals to assist them: going to court unassisted became more risky.

Since 2010: professional action

• In 2010, it was clearly becoming more and more difficult for individual consumers to go to court by themselves. Frédéric Cuif, a French professional lawyer and connoisseur of free software, contacted AFUL and the Racketware team. He soon became a strong specialist of hardware-software bundling.
• Since 2010, more and more consumers turn to him to represent them in court. Judges thus receive well structured argumentations, which eases issuing good decisions.

Legal arguments valid across Europe

The legal arguments currently used in France are directly transposed from European directive 2005/29/CE and can therefore be used throughout the European Union. Read more about these arguments.