InfoCuria and the UK Intellectual Property Office have released new information about a recent question referred to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) from the German Federal Supreme Court (Bundesgerichthof).  In essence, the reference asks the CJEU whether European courts, when considering copyright infringement in their territories, may deem contributory acts of infringement in other Member States as also having taken place within their jurisdiction.

More specifically, the reference, named HI HOTEL HCF (Case C-387-12) asks the CJEU to consider whether a court in one Member State has jurisdiction to rule both on a copyright infringement that occurred in its Member State, but also on the “contributing act” to that copyright infringement which took place in the territory of a second Member State by a person who assisted in the principal infringement on the domestic territory.  The CJEU is asked to interpret Article 5(3) of the Brussels I Regulation (Regulation 44/2001), which sets out that, for matters relating to tort (or, in civil law jurisdictions, delict or quasi-delict) a person domiciled in a Member State may be sued in another Member State if that is where the “harmful event” occurred or may occur.  The key question in the context of a cross-border copyright infringement is therefore where the “harmful event” occurs.
Continue Reading German Court Refers Question on Cross-Border Copyright Infringement to the CJEU