Personality and trademark rights follow different paths but converge when discrediting comes into play. Whereas honorability is connected to a person's name, goodwill is linked to a trademark or trade name. If the name and trademark or trade name coincide, the same discrediting conduct may duplicate its negative effects, affecting both personality and trademark rights at the same time. A recent Supreme Court (Civil Chamber) decision handed down on 24 February 2014 (Real Madrid Club de Fútbol and Mr. Evelio; "Real Madrid" v. Le Monde and Mr. Luis Enrique; "Le Monde"), is illustrative on the side of personality rights.

After eight years of litigation, Real Madrid has won the legal battle over Le Monde regarding the article published on 7 December 2006 by the French newspaper. According to the article, Real Madrid, its medical team and a few of its players were allegedly involved in a massive doping case called Operación Puerto, in which the central character, a certain Dr. Eufemiano Fuentes, was finally sentenced to one and a half years of imprisonment. The Court considered that Le Monde did not carry out a proper due diligence over its sources and materials prior to the publication of the story,  which was considered to have been written precipitously. Furthermore, the Court ruled that the testimonies and the evidence provided in the proceedings lacked any reliable basis. Le Monde is now ordered to compensate Real Madrid with up to €300,000 and to publish the decision in Le Monde and in the Spanish sports newspaper Marca.

The Supreme Court provides useful criteria in order to assess how to balance the personality rights affecting one's reputation with respect to the right to freedom of expression. These can be summarized as follows:

1. The fundamental right to honor protects one's personal reputation, which is understood as the appreciation others may have of a person. This right protects against insulting messages or expressions that may objectively discredit one's personal reputation.
2. One's personal reputation also covers professional reputation, but not every attack to someone's professional reputation affects his or her personal reputation. For this to occur, the attack must be particularly intense, affecting not only the economic side of the professional or commercial activity, but also the personal sphere. Questioning someone's ethics, honesty or integrity in carrying out professional tasks may affect his or her personal rights. 
3. The freedom of expression does have more weight when the information is of public or general interest. 
4. Contrary to freedom of speech, the freedom of expression, when it comes to communicating news that may affect the reputation of a third party, is specially conditioned to the veracity of what is said. 
5. Veracity is not an absolute requirement: what is necessary is a reasonable due diligence approach to veracity in the particular circumstances, in order to respect the public right to information. Therefore, the following considerations must be taken into account: this due diligence must be of special intensity when the information might negatively affect the reputation of a third person; the presumption of innocence must be respected; general or public interest requires a more exhaustive contrasting of the facts; private individuals as opposed to public individuals have greater privacy; the subject matter of the information is relevant, since it is not the same to present information as one's own information than to transmit it neutrally; typology of sources and actual chances to contrast the information, etc. 
6. Arguably, there is not a right to insult. Therefore, depicting the information with a libelous or disproportionate manner is not legitimate. 
7. In order to prosecute an infringement to one's honor, the information must provide data so that the individual or company is easily identifiable. The subjective impression of being the target of the information does not make the information eligible for being prosecuted.