No territorial boundaries for infringements on the web
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No territorial boundaries for infringements on the web
Recent case law in the CJEU has confirmed the position that a court (whether UK or international) is able to hear and decide upon a legal action for copyright infringement committed on or through a website accessible within the jurisdiction of that court.
The CJEU case of Pinckney v Mediatech (3 Oct 2013) was asked to rule on this question when a copyright infringing CD was made by a company in Austria and sold by different companies in the UK on a website which was accessible in France. However, the CJEU ruled that the national court would will use its domestic law to assess infringement and would only decide upon the damages within that territory.
This is an interesting decision that will have wide ranging consequences and we wonder whether this choice of court was the most commercially beneficial? The fact that the subject matter was copyright infringement is also important as we anticipate the decision would have been different had we been ruling on national registered trade mark rights where the only court with jurisdiction is the court of the territory in which the mark is registered.