Under French law, different legal tools can be used to protect retail designs and layouts against imitation by indelicate competitors, either per se or for their contribution to the economic competitiveness of a business. Among these tools, author rights, industrial property rights and unfair competition claims can be efficient means to defend original and distinctive layouts against unauthorized copies. We publish here the article written by Jean-Mathieu Bertho and Aurélie Robert and published on the English web-based legal forum "Lexology".