The encyclopedia · Legal & Compliance · Legal decision · 2009–2024
Essilor kept online rivals from selling its lenses for 11 years — the bill was €81M
Essilor refused to supply online-only retailers its lenses, banned its trademarks to them, tied the warranty to in-store rules. Fine: €81.07M.
Essilor · EssilorLuxottica · 2024-12-12
What happened
When French rules loosened in the early 2000s to let corrective lenses be sold online, new 'pure players' like Sensee, Happyview and DirectOptic appeared to cut the price of glasses. Essilor — the dominant lens manufacturer in France and the world — decided they would not get its product. From April 2009 it refused to deliver Essilor or Varilux branded lenses to online-only sales sites.
The squeeze went further. Online retailers were banned from using Essilor's trademarks or communicating the origin of the lenses they sold. And Essilor's adaptation warranty — the promise that the lenses would be right — was conditioned on a measurement protocol designed exclusively for physical shops, so an e-commerce site could not honour it.
The practices ran for 11 years and 7 months, until 23 December 2020. In decision 22-D-16 of 6 October 2022, the Autorité de la concurrence ruled them an abuse of dominant position and fined Essilor International €81,067,400 — of which €15.4 million jointly with its parent EssilorLuxottica. The regulator found the conduct had limited consumer choice and helped keep eyeglass prices high and rising in France.
Both companies appealed. On 12 December 2024 the Paris Court of Appeal confirmed the sanction in full.
Why it happened
- Essilor treated online channels as a threat to its physical retail network instead of a new customer — and used its dominance in lenses to police distribution
- The trademark ban and the in-store-only warranty protocol were engineered around the weakness of pure players, not around any genuine quality requirement
- Eleven years of conduct means the policy survived several chances to reconsider it — it was strategy, not drift
- The fine, large as it is, arrived after the market had already matured; the deterrence came a decade late for the rivals it choked
The lesson
A dominant supplier that fences its own product off from a cheaper channel is not protecting quality — it is pricing the regulator's fine into its distribution strategy, and the fine eventually lands.
Aftermath
The Paris Court of Appeal (Pole 5, Chamber 7) rejected the appeals in full on 12 December 2024, confirming decision 22-D-16. EssilorLuxottica pays; French online optical retail, which grew despite the blockade, continues under the clarified rule that discriminatory supply terms for pure players are abuse.
Sources
- Autorité de la concurrence — Optical lenses sector: fines worth €81,067,400 (decision 22-D-16, 6 Oct 2022)
- Gouache Avocats — Confirmation des sanctions ADLC contre Luxottica et Essilor par la Cour d'appel de Paris (12 Dec 2024)
- Tradingsat (Boursier.com/Reuters) — L'Autorité de la concurrence sanctionne Essilor International de 81 M€
spotted an error? The club wants to know.
More like this
An artist sold $1.1m of fake fur Birkins as NFTs — Hermès sued and won every count
Louboutin sued YSL over an all-red shoe — and ended with a narrower trademark
LVMH secretly built a 22% stake in Hermès — and was forced to give it all back
Somewhere, someone solved the problem this company failed at. 2nd Opinion →
Comments · 0
Sign in to join the comments.