1. Cybercrime & Cybersecurity
1.1. Cybercrime
Arrest: The OFAC (Cybercrime Office) has announced that it has arrested five of the leading members of the French hacker group ‘MARAK’, which specifically targeted healthcare facilities, companies in the medical sector, and an email service used by the customs service (Press release of 23 June 2026).
Coopération internationale : Europol et INTERPOL ont renouvelé leur partenariat en adoptant de nouvelles priorités opérationnelles communes pour 2026-2027. L’accord vise à renforcer la lutte contre la criminalité organisée, la cybercriminalité, la criminalité financière et le terrorisme grâce à une meilleure coordination des enquêtes transfrontalières. (Communiqué Europol, 22 juin 2026)
YggTorrent shutdown: Cyber investigators from the Gendarmerie have shut down the illegal download site YggTorrent as part of an investigation into organised copyright infringement, targeting the administrators and contributors of the platform used for the unauthorised distribution of copyright-protected works (Press release from the National Gendarmerie, 1 July 2026)
1.2. Cybersecurity
2. Desinformation and information warfare
Online propaganda: The Court of Justice of the European Union has ruled that the ban on broadcasting content from the Russia Today channel also applies to websites freely accessible to the public, confirming that the restrictive measures adopted by the European Union target all means of disseminating such content in order to combat Russian propaganda in the context of the war in Ukraine (Press release from the Court of Justice of the European Union, 2 July 2026)
3. Personal data and privacy
3.1. Data breaches and incidents
Data breach: The CNIL is warning victims of data breaches against fraudulent offers promising to delete their data or provide compensation, and is urging them to be vigilant against the resulting scam attempts (Press release from the French Data Protection Authority, 24 June 2026).
3.2. Penalties and regulations
Data transfer: On 29 June, the US Supreme Court’s ruling declaring all of the country’s independent regulatory bodies – including the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which is responsible for monitoring compliance with the EU-US agreements on personal data – to be unconstitutional has rendered European and US legislation incompatible. Max Schrems’ organisation, Noyb, is now calling on the European Commission to consider withdrawing from the EU-US data agreement (Press release of 29 June 2026).
Gambling and the GDPR: The CNIL reiterates the obligations of gambling operators regarding the protection of personal data, in particular the minimisation of data collected, transparency in data processing, the security of information and respect for players’ rights, whilst highlighting the high risks associated with the sensitivity of data in this sector (Press release from the French Data Protection Authority dated 27 June 2026)
4. Digital Economy and Competition
Mapping: The IGN has launched cartes.gouv.fr, a free, sovereign mapping platform comprising 1,141 data layers. The service also includes a feature similar to Google Street View and aims to strengthen France’s public digital mapping provision. (IGN press release, 29 June 2026)
Fast fashion: The bill aimed at combating ‘ultra-fast fashion’ has been definitively passed. It provides, in particular, for a ban on advertising such products across all media with effect from 1 January 2027. (Press release of 29 June 2026)
Competition: A Swedish court has ordered Google to pay €1.3 billion to PriceRunner for abuse of a dominant position. The court found that Google had, for several years, favoured its own price comparison service to the detriment of its competitors, causing economic harm to the Swedish company. (Press release dated 1 July 2026)
Competition and AI: Anthropic accuses Alibaba of carrying out an ‘adversarial distillation’ operation targeting its Claude model, using around 25,000 accounts that generated nearly 28.8 million interactions in order to extract the model’s capabilities and train competing systems, a practice raising issues of competition and value capture within the artificial intelligence sector (Press release of 25 June 2026)
5. Artificial Intelligence
5.1. Copyright in the age of IA
5.2. Regulation and supervision
Generative AI: The Munich Regional Court (Germany) has ruled that Google is liable for content generated by its ‘AI Overviews’ feature, finding that these responses constitute the company’s own statements rather than mere third-party content; this excludes the limited liability regime applicable to search engines and holds Google liable in the event of false or defamatory statements (Munich Regional Court I, 28 May 2026, judgment no. 26 O 869/26)
Assessment of AI models: The White House is reported to have asked OpenAI to delay the public roll-out of GPT-5.6 to allow for a 30-day security review, with the model initially to be made available to a limited number of partners approved by the US government, as part of the new framework for evaluating advanced AI models (Press release of 25 June 2026)
6. Intellectual Property and counterfeiting
6.1. Legal actions and proceedings
6.2. Regulation and supervision
Intellectual Property: The INPI has announced the publication of a decree simplifying the Intellectual Property Code, aimed at modernising and clarifying certain administrative procedures relating to industrial property rights, in order to facilitate the process for applicants and make the applicable law on patents, trade marks and designs more accessible (Press release from the National Institute of Industrial Property dated 26 June 2026)
7. Regulation & Justice
7.1. French Law
Digital evidence: A report by a judicial officer is not sufficient to establish with certainty the date on which computer files were created or amended, as the Court of Cassation has pointed out that such reports do not enable the detection of any manipulation of data, which necessitates a rigorous assessment of the reliability of digital evidence in court (Court of Cassation, Civil Division 2, 12 June 2026, No. 24/14629)
7.2. European Law
Abuse of a dominant position: The Court of Justice of the European Union has definitively upheld the €4.1 billion fine imposed on Google for abuse of a dominant position in relation to Android, ruling that the anti-competitive practices relating to the pre-installation of Google Search and Chrome, as well as the agreements imposed on smartphone manufacturers, were valid, thereby rejecting the company’s final appeal (Press release from the Court of Justice of the European Union dated 2 July 2026)
