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French court rules on free deliveries

14.05.08 Barbara Casassus

The French Booksellers Association (Syndicat de la Librairie Française, SLF) has lost part of a round in its legal battle to stop online retailers from offering free book deliveries. The supreme court ruled last week that free deliveries with no minimum order offered by France Télécom subsidiary Alapage did not contravene the 1981 single book price Lang law, named after former  socialist culture minister Jack Lang.

This reversed last year's decision by the Paris appeal court, which instructed Alapage to pay the SLF €50,000 in damages for unfair competition. The SLF is playing down its first defeat. "Most important was that the supreme court endorsed the earlier ruling that book gift vouchers violated the Lang law," said Benoît Bougerol, SLF president and owner of La Maison du Livre in Rodez in the south of France. "If we had lost on that, it would have been a catastrophe."

The supreme court has asked the appeal court to deliberate again on  free deliveries by Alapage, while the SLF is asking the government to  define the practice of providing an allied service that is worth more than the product concerned or at least than the retailer's margin. A  paperback can sell for three euros, but costs five euros to deliver, Bougerol said. "Is it dumping and if not, what is it ?" The problem is that there are no provisions in the commercial code governing deliveries of items sold electronically, he added.

The SLF said that it had no objection to book sales on the internet. On the  contrary, it was working on a portal to enable independent booksellers to sell online, and hoped to be ready to launch next year. But the portal would be doomed if the deliveries issue was not settled first, Bougerol said.

Alapage and other online retailers are obliged to provide free deliveries and sell at a loss in order to keep up with Amazon, he  said. The market leader lost its first court case against the SLF last December, and is preparing for a Versailles appeal court hearing on 9th October.

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