What permission culture really looks like

Following up on some newspaper representatives' calls for a complete "permission culture," here's a story about a well-known French business suing a novelist for setting a fictional thriller at the business. "'No one can have anything to do with or talk about the Marché Saint Pierre without the authorisation of the owner and the director,' [the store's director] said. 'It's defamation.'" What I most like is "the owner and the director." Why not the employees too? Also the people who have bought stuff from there in the past? Perhaps also the government agency that licenses the business? What, I wonder, is the line that the AP etc. draw between their claims and this one?