Following the French Presidential elections that ended on May 6, 2007, we find it interesting to look at how political trademarks were handled.
Mr. Sarkozy, member of the Union pour un Mouvement Populaire “ UMP (Union for a Popular Movement) party, won the French elections with 53,06 % on the second tour.
While the party of the new president holds a word registration for UMP alone, and another one for 
, they currently use 
.
The domain name policy is axed on both the u-m-p and sarkozy extensions, but the main extensions for unionpourunmouvementpopulaire are available.
Mrs. Ségolene Royal, belonging to the Socialist Party (PS), ended up in second place at the end of the second round elections with 46,94 % of the vote.
The Socialist Party name and its logo 
have no corresponding trademarks on the registries. The domain name policy is concentrated on parti-socialiste.fr. Other extensions of parti-socialiste and partisocialiste belong to third parties or, are available.
The Socialist Party leader name is only adopted as segoleneroyal.com. Mr. Bayrou, member of the Democrat Movement, was in the third place at the end of the first round.
This party changed the name it initially planned, Democrat Party, into Democrat Movement because a Democrat Party was disclosed to have already existed in the early eighties.
Word and device trademarks have been filed for Democrat Movement (unpublished at this time). The domain name policy is focussed both on the Democrat Movement name (not on the initials DM) or on its leader’s name.
The French Communist party has applied a minimalist strategy in terms of protection. The party name and logo are not protected as trademarks. Their sole domain name is particommuniste.fr.
All the parties above concur in not having applied to register trademarks for the slogans they used during the Presidential campaign (Together, everything is possible !, France for President!, All the strengths of France!,).
Certain parties have recently filed their current slogans for the Parliamentary members’ election (for instance Together for the President majority!). The variety of political ideas is reflected through the variety of trademark policies of the different French parties. Each party has an individual approach, different from the others. They are all perfectible but some, in particular, need to apply a better industrial property protection.