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Five legal publishers sentenced for abusive proceedings against the Doctrine.fr site

2023-02-23T20:08:38.582Z


The court reproaches the companies in question for having imposed on Forseti “judicial pressure out of proportion to the reproaches formulated”.


Five major legal publishers who had attacked the Doctrine.fr search engine for

“unfair competition”

were dismissed on Thursday by the Paris commercial court and sentenced for abusive procedure, according to the judgment of which AFP has read.

The court accuses the companies Dalloz, Lexbase, Lexisnexis, Lextenso and Wolters Kluwers France of having imposed on Forseti (the company that publishes the Doctrine.fr site)

“judicial pressure out of proportion to the accusations made”

.

"Their behavior can only be explained by the desire to intimidate this new entrant in an attempt to eliminate it from the market by hampering its capacity for development",

he continues, condemning them jointly and severally to 50,000 euros for abusive procedure and 125,000 euros for legal costs.

The five publishers, who had experienced a drop in their turnover after the arrival of Doctrine on the market, had sued Forseti in 2020 for

"unfair competition"

,

"misleading advertising"

and

"parasitism"

and collectively claimed nearly 2 .5 million euros to the company.

"The competitive advantage that Forseti had results (...) from its technological advance and cannot be qualified as unfair"

, yet established the court.

Read alsoFrench publishers attack Apple

“After more than 6 years of accusations, the Paris Commercial Court recognizes that Doctrine's collection of court decisions has always been lawful.

This is a huge victory for Doctrine but also for the openness and transparency of the law for which we have been committed since 2016”

, welcomed in a press release Guillaume Carrère, the leader of the platform which claims some 11,000 customers and references. more than 10 million documents.

Created in 2016, Doctrine.fr has experienced very strong growth in recent years and raised 10 million euros in June 2018 from the Otium Venture fund and Xavier Niel, the founder of Free.

On its website, the company specifies that it has

“three sources for collecting court decisions”

.

She explains

“permanently browsing the web in search of new decisions available in open access”

, having

“partnerships with the various jurisdictions”

and

“receiving many decisions sent directly by lawyers”

.

Contacted by AFP, the justice editors did not respond immediately.

The decision does not close all the legal controversy.

One of the publishers, Lexbase, filed a criminal complaint in January 2023 against Doctrine for

“concealment”

of legal decisions that it considers fraudulently obtained, and Doctrine is currently preparing a complaint in return.

Source: lefigaro

All news articles on 2023-02-23

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