Glossary
French: déposant
The déposant is, in a French trademark filing, the person who will be the owner of the mark — its proprietor. As in US practice, the applicant is not the person who fills out the form: that person is the agent (mandataire, e.g. the trademark attorney) or the legal representative of the company.
The applicant may assign all or part of the mark it has filed (see trademark assignment), so the applicant is not always the current owner of the mark. French records keep the historical notion of déposant alongside the current titulaire (owner); the EUIPO, by contrast, uses only the notion of “owner” in its online database — which, as the source materials of this glossary wryly note, is doubtless easier to understand.
If the mark is filed in the name of a legal entity, the filing must be made by a person with authority to represent that entity to be valid. A French avocat (attorney) needs no power of attorney to represent one or several applicants before the INPI — a convenience compared to jurisdictions requiring executed POAs.
See also: trademark owner, trademark filing, French trademark registration.