How to Obtain a Website Blocking Injunction in France (2026): Dynamic Orders vs Mirror Sites

Website blocking injunction france procedures have become one of the most effective tools available to rights holders confronting online piracy, counterfeit distribution and unauthorised streaming in 2026. A website blocking injunction france order compels internet service providers to prevent their subscribers from reaching an infringing site, and increasingly these orders are drafted dynamically so they extend automatically to mirror domains and newly registered pirate addresses. This guide is written for in-house counsel, brand protection leads and anti-piracy managers who need a practical, procedural roadmap: which court to approach, what evidence to assemble, how to draft enforceable dynamic language, how ISPs implement the block, and what timelines and costs to expect. The legal foundation is Article L.

336-2 of the Code de la propriété intellectuelle, refined by Court of Justice of the European Union case law and by French court practice that continues to evolve.

What is a website blocking injunction and who needs this guide

A website blocking injunction is a court order directing intermediaries, principally internet access providers, to take measures preventing users in France from accessing a website that infringes intellectual property rights. It does not require the rights holder to sue the operator of the infringing site directly, which is decisive when pirate operators are anonymous, based offshore, or deliberately evasive. Instead the order is directed at technical intermediaries who are best placed to interrupt access.

The statutory anchor is Article L.336-2 of the Code de la propriété intellectuelle, which authorises courts to order any measure suitable to prevent or stop infringement of a copyright or neighbouring right against any person capable of contributing to remedying it. In 2026, the practical value of a website blocking injunction france order lies in its dynamic character: courts may permit extension to mirror sites and successor domains, so that a single order can keep pace with operators who simply re-register under a new name. This guide serves rights holders who need to convert their rights into an enforceable, technically implementable blocking outcome.

Quick summary: types of blocking orders in France (référé vs L.336-2)

French practice offers two principal routes to a website blocking injunction france outcome, and choosing correctly at the outset shapes speed, cost and the breadth of relief available.

Référé IP, the emergency route

The référé is an urgent, summary procedure heard by a single judge who can grant interim measures quickly where the matter is urgent and the infringement is not seriously contestable. For rights holders facing live streaming of a sporting event, a mass counterfeiting campaign, or a piracy surge, the référé can deliver a provisional blocking order relatively quickly. It is the workhorse of fast-moving enforcement, though the relief is provisional and can be revisited on the merits.

L.336-2 CPI route, the statutory basis

Article L.336-2 CPI provides the substantive legal basis for ordering intermediaries to block access, and it can be invoked both in référé and in ordinary proceedings. The ordinary action is slower but produces a more durable, fully reasoned judgment, which is valuable where the block must survive appeal or where broad dynamic relief is sought. Many rights holders begin in référé for immediate effect and, where necessary, consolidate through a full L.336-2 action.

Both routes are heard by the tribunal judiciaire with intellectual property competence, discussed in detail below.

Legal framework: L.336-2 CPI, CJEU case law and balancing rights

A durable website blocking injunction france order rests on three pillars: the French statutory text, the EU jurisprudence that shapes how far intermediary obligations can go, and the data-protection and fundamental-rights constraints that keep measures proportionate.

Statutory text and key elements

Article L.336-2 of the Code de la propriété intellectuelle empowers the court, on application by holders of copyright or neighbouring rights, their assignees or bodies entitled to represent them, to order all measures suitable to prevent or bring an end to an infringement occasioned by the content of an online communication service. Critically, those measures may be directed at any person able to contribute to remedying the infringement, which includes access providers and hosting providers even where they are not themselves infringers. The statute is deliberately open-textured on remedies, leaving the court to fashion proportionate measures, and this flexibility is what allows dynamic and mirror-site relief to be crafted case by case.

Relevant EU case law and its implications

Two decisions of the Court of Justice of the European Union frame the outer limits of any French blocking order. In Scarlet Extended (C-70/10), the Court held that an intermediary cannot be required to install a system that filters all electronic communications indiscriminately, at its own expense and for an unlimited period, as a general monitoring obligation. That ruling means a website blocking injunction france order must target identified infringing services rather than impose open-ended surveillance of all traffic.

In UPC Telekabel Wien (C-314/12), the Court confirmed that an access provider may be ordered to block a specified infringing site, and that the order may leave the ISP to choose the concrete technical measures, provided the measures are strictly targeted, do not needlessly deprive users of lawful access, and the ISP can avoid penalties by showing it took all reasonable steps. Together these authorities establish the proportionality architecture French courts apply: targeted, effective, and respectful of the ISP’s freedom to conduct business and users’ access to lawful information.

Privacy and data-protection constraints (CNIL)

Technical blocking must respect data-protection law. Deep packet inspection and other techniques that examine the content of communications raise significant privacy concerns, and the CNIL, France’s data-protection authority, expects any measure interfering with communications to be necessary and proportionate. In practice this steers courts and ISPs toward lighter-touch methods such as DNS or IP blocking, and away from intrusive traffic-content analysis, unless a compelling and proportionate justification exists. Any website blocking injunction france application should anticipate these constraints and propose methods that achieve the enforcement goal without disproportionate interception of user traffic.

Which court and procedural route to use for a website blocking injunction france application

Getting the forum right is the first practical decision, and it directly answers the recurring question of which court has jurisdiction.

Tribunal judiciaire, where to file

Applications under L.336-2 CPI are brought before the tribunal judiciaire, and intellectual property matters are concentrated in courts with specialised IP competence. In particular, the Tribunal judiciaire de Paris has exclusive jurisdiction over many industrial property matters and handles a substantial share of French IP litigation. Filing before a specialised chamber matters because the judges routinely handle blocking applications, understand the technical measures involved, and are comfortable crafting dynamic relief. Counsel should confirm the competent court before drafting to avoid a jurisdictional challenge that delays urgent relief.

Choosing référé versus ordinary action

The référé is appropriate where urgency is genuine and the infringement is clear; it delivers speed at the cost of finality. The ordinary action suits situations requiring a comprehensive, appeal-resistant judgment or unusually broad dynamic mechanisms. A common strategy is a two-stage approach: secure an immediate provisional block by référé, then pursue a full L.336-2 judgment to lock in durable, dynamically extensible relief.

Cross-border and expedited options

Where operators are offshore and the intermediaries to be ordered are French access providers, the French court can still act because the order bites on domestic intermediaries. In cases of extreme urgency, most notably live sports piracy, for which France has developed a dedicated framework under Article L.333-10 of the Code du sport administered with the involvement of ARCOM, applicants may seek expedited relief so that the block takes effect before the infringing service can react. Cross-border coordination with parallel EU proceedings can reinforce a French order, though the French block operates independently on national ISPs.

Evidence and pleading: what rights holders must prove

The strength of any website blocking injunction france application is decided by the evidentiary file. Courts will not grant blocking relief on assertion alone; they need proof of the right, proof of the infringement, and a clear technical mapping of what is to be blocked.

Essential documentary evidence

• Proof of ownership. Registration certificates, chain-of-title documents, deposit records, or evidence of authorship establishing that the applicant holds the relevant copyright, neighbouring right or trademark. Registration records from the INPI support ownership claims for registered rights.
• Scope of exclusive rights. Documentation showing the applicant’s exclusive rights over the works or marks in issue and, where relevant, standing as assignee or collective management organisation.
• Proof of infringement. Dated screenshots, captures of the infringing pages, download or stream logs, and records demonstrating that the material is available without authorisation to users in France.
• Prior notices. Evidence of takedown notices sent to the host, operator or registrar, and proof of their inaction, which can help demonstrate that blocking is a necessary and proportionate measure.

Technical evidence and expert reports

Blocking orders operate on domains, IP addresses and URLs, so the file must translate the infringement into technical identifiers. This typically means mapping the infringing URLs to hosting IP addresses, capturing WHOIS and registrar records, and documenting the DNS configuration of the target service. An independent technical expert report that establishes the URL-to-IP mapping, confirms the infringing nature of the resource and describes the recommended blocking method can carry significant weight. Where mirror-site extension is anticipated, the expert should describe the pattern of the operator’s behaviour so the court can consider proportionate dynamic relief.

Preservation and interim measures

Preserving evidence is essential because pirate operators frequently alter or take down content once they sense enforcement. A capture of the infringing pages authenticated by a commissaire de justice (the profession that merged the former huissiers de justice and commissaires-priseurs judiciaires) fixes the state of the infringement at a specific date and time and resists later challenge. Where appropriate, a saisie-contrefaçon or equivalent evidentiary seizure can secure proof before the operator reacts. Careful documentation of the chain of custody for all captures and logs anticipates any disclosure dispute and reinforces the reliability of the evidence before the court.

Drafting effective dynamic blocking orders: scope, wording and durations

The drafting of the order determines whether a website blocking injunction france measure is effective in practice or is defeated the moment the operator moves. Precision and dynamism must be balanced against proportionality.

Core language for dynamic orders

Effective orders identify the target service by reference to its domains and subdomains, associated IP addresses or ranges, and characteristic URL patterns, and they may provide a mechanism for adding newly identified mirror domains that host the same infringing service. Well-drafted relief will:

• List the initial domains, subdomains and IP addresses to be blocked with precision.
• Define the infringing service by objective characteristics so that mirrors offering the same catalogue can be identified.
• Where the court permits, authorise a mechanism, often via notification to the ISPs, supervised or subject to judicial review, for adding new domains that replicate the blocked service.
• Specify the duration of the block and a review or renewal mechanism.
• Provide for periodic penalties (astreinte) for non-compliance and address confidentiality of any commercially sensitive technical detail.

Limits: proportionality and overbroad relief

Courts will refuse or narrow relief that risks blocking lawful content or that imposes disproportionate cost or a general monitoring burden on intermediaries, consistent with Scarlet and Telekabel. Dynamic extension must therefore be tethered to objective criteria and, in most cases, to judicial supervision of additions rather than an unfettered private power for the rights holder to expand the block at will. Overbroad drafting is a common reason a strong case still yields weak relief.

Model clause (short)

A concise model, to be adapted and reviewed by counsel, reads: “The respondent access providers shall, within [X] days of notification, implement measures suitable to prevent their subscribers in France from accessing the service identified at the domains, subdomains and IP addresses listed in Annex 1, together with any further domain name or IP address subsequently notified to them in accordance with this order that gives access to the same infringing service, for a period of [X] months, subject to periodic review by the court.” This language should always be tailored to the specific technical file and the court’s practice.

Technical blocking options and how ISPs implement injunctions

Understanding how ISPs implement a website blocking injunction france order lets counsel specify realistic, proportionate methods and anticipate the operator’s evasion. Each technique carries a different balance of effectiveness, cost and overblocking risk.

Common blocking techniques explained

• DNS blocking. The ISP’s resolvers refuse to resolve the target domain. It is inexpensive and quick to deploy but can be circumvented by users switching DNS resolvers, and it blocks at domain level rather than page level.
• IP blocking. Traffic to the infringing server’s IP address is dropped. Effective against dedicated infrastructure but risky where the address is shared, since lawful sites on the same IP can be caught, a serious overblocking hazard.
• URL filtering. Blocking of specific paths allows granular targeting of infringing pages while leaving the rest of a domain accessible, but it is more resource-intensive and technically limited where traffic is encrypted.
• Encryption-related limitations. Widespread use of HTTPS and evolving protocols such as encrypted SNI reduce the visibility of the destination, constraining fine-grained filtering and pushing enforcement toward DNS and IP measures unless more intrusive inspection, with its privacy costs, is contemplated.

Specifying method and fallback in the order

Consistent with Telekabel, orders frequently identify the result to be achieved and leave the ISP to select the concrete technical means, while sometimes specifying a preferred method and a fallback where the primary technique fails. Building in flexibility avoids the order becoming obsolete as the operator changes hosting or encryption behaviour.

Costs and cost recovery

ISPs incur implementation and maintenance costs, and the regulatory context, including ARCEP’s oversight of the telecommunications sector, informs how those obligations and costs are handled. Whether and to what extent implementation costs fall on the rights holder or the intermediary is a live issue that counsel should address in the pleadings and in the proposed order.

Enforcement, monitoring, timelines and costs: what to expect in 2026

Securing the order is the beginning, not the end. A website blocking injunction france measure must be notified, implemented, monitored and, where necessary, enforced through penalties.

Typical timeline checklist

• Référé: provisional blocking relief within weeks where urgency and clear infringement are established (timing depends on the court’s schedule).
• Ordinary L.336-2 action: a full, reasoned judgment typically over several months.
• Post-order steps: formal notification to each ISP, verification that the block is live, and monitoring for mirror domains and successor sites.
• Renewals: where the order specifies a fixed duration, prepare for renewal or extension well before expiry.

Costs, general considerations

Costs vary with complexity, urgency and the number of intermediaries involved. Principal cost drivers are legal fees for the application, commissaire de justice and technical-expert fees to authenticate infringement and map targets, and any ISP implementation costs the court apportions. A référé is generally less costly than a full contested action, but the need for robust technical evidence means expert input is rarely optional.

Sanctions for ISP non-compliance

Orders are typically reinforced by a periodic penalty payment (astreinte) that accrues for each day of non-compliance, giving intermediaries a strong incentive to implement promptly. Consistent with EU case law, an ISP can generally avoid penalties where it demonstrates that it has taken all reasonable measures, which underlines the value of specifying achievable methods in the order itself. Enforcement disputes and appeals ultimately feed into the national case law developed through the tribunals, the cours d’appel, the Cour de cassation and, where administrative measures are involved, the Conseil d’État.

Extending a website blocking injunction france order to mirror sites and new domains

A defining feature of modern enforcement is dynamism. Pirate operators respond to a block by re-registering under fresh domains, so the practical answer to whether French courts can address mirror sites is: yes, French courts have shown willingness to order updates or extensions covering mirror and successor domains, and doing so is increasingly central to effective relief.

Evidence and procedure for extension

To extend a block to a mirror or successor domain, the rights holder demonstrates that the new domain gives access to the same infringing service already covered by the order. The extension file mirrors the original in miniature: captures showing the mirror hosts the identical catalogue, WHOIS and IP mapping for the new domain, and, where the order provides for it, notification to the ISPs. Where an order includes a court-supervised dynamic mechanism, additions can proceed more swiftly on a documented notification rather than requiring a wholly new action each time.

Practical strategy and step-by-step approach

• Monitor continuously for mirror and successor domains using technical detection so evasion is caught early.
• Assemble a compact evidence pack per new domain: capture, WHOIS, IP mapping and confirmation it replicates the blocked service.
• Serve the ISPs and, where relevant, registrars with the extension request in the form the order prescribes.
• Where the order lacks an update mechanism, file a targeted application demonstrating identity of service and proportionality.
• Coordinate with parallel EU or foreign proceedings where the operator infringes across borders, while relying on the French order to bind domestic ISPs.

The consistent thread is proportionality: courts authorise extension where the mirror is objectively the same infringing service, and they retain supervision so that the dynamic power is not abused. A well-designed original order, drafted with mirror extension in mind, can reduce the friction and cost of keeping the block effective as operators shift domains.

Conclusion, next steps for a website blocking injunction france strategy

A website blocking injunction france order remains one of the most efficient routes to interrupting online piracy and counterfeiting where the operator is anonymous or offshore, and in 2026 the emphasis is firmly on dynamic relief that can survive the operator’s move to mirror domains. Success depends on three disciplines: a rigorous evidence file proving ownership and clear infringement, forum and procedural choices matched to the urgency of the case, and drafting that is dynamic yet proportionate under L. 336-2 CPI and the CJEU framework. Rights holders who combine strong technical evidence with carefully drafted dynamic clauses tend to obtain orders that stay effective as pirate operators evolve.

For tailored guidance on preparing and enforcing a website blocking injunction france application, and on extending existing orders to new domains, consult experienced IP litigation counsel through the Global Law Experts directory.

Related resources include the IP Litigation, France practice area and the GLE lawyer directory for France IP Litigation.

Sources

1. Code de la propriété intellectuelle (Legifrance)
2. EUR-Lex, CJEU, Scarlet Extended (C-70/10)
3. EUR-Lex, CJEU, UPC Telekabel Wien (C-314/12)
4. CNIL, Commission Nationale de l’Informatique et des Libertés
5. ARCOM, Autorité de régulation de la communication audiovisuelle et numérique
6. ARCEP, French telecommunications regulator
7. Cour de cassation
8. Conseil d’État
9. INPI, Institut National de la Propriété Industrielle