The IP Runway: Issue No. 2
Intellectual property insights for the global business of fashion.
When a Law and a Ruling Landed One Day Apart
Edition two didn’t take long to find its story.
On July 8, France’s long-awaited anti-fast-fashion law formally took effect. One day later, a Paris court fined Shein 110,000 euros and banned it, across the entire EU, from selling anything resembling a Lacoste crocodile.
That’s not a coincidence of timing. It’s a preview of what enforcement in this industry is about to look like.
The case, fast
Two and a half years of debate. One law. Real money attached to it.
France’s parliament passed the bill on June 29. It was signed into law on July 8 and published in the Official Journal the next day as law n°2026-602.
The target is “ultra-fast fashion,” defined by two criteria: how much clothing a company puts on the market, and how cheap that clothing is to repair relative to what it costs to buy. Score badly on both, and the penalties apply.
Right now, that means a per-item fee of 0.25 to 12 euros. By 2030, it rises to as much as 20 euros per item, capped at half the product’s price. There’s also a ban on advertising, and on influencers promoting these brands, though the European Commission has already raised questions about whether that piece holds up under EU law.
Zara, H&M, Uniqlo, and Primark are all exempt. The government’s argument: their volumes simply aren’t comparable to Shein’s and Temu’s.
It already has an informal nickname. People are calling it the anti-Shein law. Officially, the text never says so.
The courts didn’t wait
One day after the law took effect, a Paris court handed down a separate ruling. It had nothing to do with the new statute, and everything to do with the mood around it.
Lacoste accused Shein of selling items imitating its crocodile logo. The Paris Judicial Court agreed, finding a likelihood of counterfeiting and a clear risk of consumer confusion. It awarded Lacoste 110,000 euros in interim damages and issued an injunction covering the entire EU, barring Shein from selling anything resembling the mark. Shein was also ordered to publish the ruling on its own homepage and app for a month.
A public correction, not a private settlement. France seems to have developed a taste for that particular penalty.
Shein says this is only a provisional decision, and legally, that’s accurate. The underlying case is still open. But the timing did most of the talking anyway. A brand-new law lands. A day later, a court makes an example of one of the companies it was written for.
This isn’t Shein’s first French penalty this year either. The country’s consumer protection authority fined it 22.5 million euros earlier in 2026 over its returns and order-confirmation practices. Add a Paris department store partnership that recently ended, and this stops looking like bad luck and starts looking like a country that has decided to stop asking nicely.
Why this matters beyond one crocodile
Enforcement isn’t only showing up in court anymore. It’s showing up in Parliament too, and that’s a different kind of risk for global brands, one with fixed costs and a compliance calendar attached to it, not just something to negotiate case by case.
Scale is now a legal category, not just a marketing description. A law built specifically to separate “fast fashion” from “ultra-fast fashion” means that line is now a matter of statutory definition. Brands that assumed their business model kept them out of scope should read the definition closely before assuming that’s still true.
National laws are moving faster than continental ones. France didn’t wait for a unified EU approach, and it won’t be the last country to legislate ahead of Brussels rather than through it. Multinational brands increasingly need a country-by-country compliance map, not one EU-wide strategy.
Courts and lawmakers are starting to move in the same direction at the same time, whether or not they planned it that way. For a brand already under scrutiny, that combination is a much harder environment to manage than either pressure would be on its own.
Reading the runway
IP law and regulatory law used to run on separate tracks. One about who owns a design. The other about how a product gets sold.
This week showed those tracks converging. A trademark ruling and a new statute landed a day apart, aimed at the same company, for entirely different reasons, carrying the same message.
That’s what The IP Runway will keep watching: not just who wins a single case, but how fast the rules themselves are moving underneath the whole industry.
More soon.
The IP Runway
Sources: Reuters, WWD, France 24, SGI Europe, RetailDetail EU, FashionNetwork, Storyboard18, and AFP.
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