Trade Marks – French IP Office changes policy on classifying beverages

The French IP Office (INPI) is moving away from its long standing approach to the relationship between non alcoholic (class 32) and alcoholic (class 33) beverages.

Historically, the INPI treated these goods as dissimilar for opposition and cancellation purposes. Only a handful of decisions went the other way, and usually only where the earlier mark enjoyed a strong reputation and/or the signs were identical.

A run of decisions from August 2025 onwards points to a clear shift. The INPI now tends to treat alcoholic and non alcoholic drinks as belonging to a broader category of “beverages”, and finds similarity based on shared consumption habits, a common consumer base, and overlapping points of sale and shelving. This reasoning has been applied even when comparing soft drinks with spirits, on the basis that both are beverages consumed in comparable settings and social contexts and sold through the same channels.

The change appears to be driven in part by EUIPO practice: the INPI relies on EUIPO case law holding that these goods are similar to a low degree, despite differences in ingredients and production methods. It also refers to the increasing number of brands offering both alcoholic and non alcoholic products under the same mark, and the resulting expectation that consumers will see them as related.

This has real consequences for clearance in the beverage sector in France: searches should now explicitly take into account the INPI’s evolving practice on similarity between non alcoholic and alcoholic drinks, rather than assuming that their traditional treatment as dissimilar goods will be maintained.