The CJEU in Nintendo. Where will you sue next?

As Bot AG put it, Joined Cases C-24 and 25/16 Nintendo v Big Ben gave the Court an opportunity to  determine the territorial scope of a decision adopted by a court of a Member State in respect of two co-defendants domiciled in two different Member States concerning claims supplementary to an action for infringement brought before that court.

The case concerns the relation between Brussels I and Regulation 6/2002 – which was last raised in the recent BMW case, particularly as for the former, the application of Article 6(1) (now 8(1))’s rule on anchor defendants. And finally the application of Rome II’s Article 8(2): the identification of the ‘country in which the act of infringement was committed’. In this post I will focus on the impact for Brussels I (Recast) and Rome II.

The Landgericht held that there had been an infringement by BigBen Germany and BigBen France of Nintendo’s registered Community designs. However, it dismissed the actions in so far as they concerned the use of the images of the goods corresponding to those designs by the defendants in the main proceedings.

The Landgericht ordered BigBen Germany to cease using those designs throughout the EU and also upheld, without territorial limitation, Nintendo’s supplementary claims seeking that it be sent various information, accounts and documents held by the defendants in the main proceedings, that they be ordered to pay compensation and that the destruction or recall of the goods at issue, publication of the judgment and reimbursement of the lawyers’ fees incurred by Nintendo be ordered (‘the supplementary claims’).

As regards BigBen France, the Landgericht held that it had international jurisdiction in respect of that company and ordered it to cease using the protected designs at issue throughout the EU. Concerning the supplementary claims, it limited the scope of its judgment to BigBen France’s supplies of the goods at issue to BigBen Germany, but without limiting the territorial scope of its judgment. It considered the applicable law to be that of the place of infringement and took the view that in the present case that was German, Austrian and French law.

BigBen France contends that the German courts lack jurisdiction to adopt orders against it that are applicable throughout the EU: it takes the view that such orders can have merely national territorial scope. Nintendo ia takes the view that German law should be applied to its claims relating to BigBen Germany and French law to those relating to BigBen France.

At 52 the CJEU holds that ‘Taking into account the objective pursued by Article 6(1) of Regulation No 44/2001, which seeks inter alia to avoid the risk of irreconcilable judgments, the existence of the same situation of fact must in such circumstances — if proven, which is for the referring court to verify, and where an application is made to that effect — cover all the activities of the various defendants, including the supplies made by the parent company on its own account, and not be limited to certain aspects or elements of them.’

If I understand this issue correctly (it is not always easy to see the jurisdictional forest for the many IP trees in the judgment), this means the Court restricts the potential for the use of anchor defendants in Article 8(1): the more facts one needs to take into account, the less likely these will be the ‘same’ that matter for the alleged infringement of the anchor defendant.

As for the application of Article 8(2) Rome II, at 98 and following inter alia analysis of the various language versions of the Article, the CJEU equates the notion ‘country in which the act of infringement is committed’ with the locus delicti commissi:  ‘it refers to the country where the event giving rise to the damage occurred, namely the country on whose territory the act of infringement was committed.‘ At 103: ‘…where the same defendant is accused of various acts of infringement falling under the concept of ‘use’ within the meaning of Article 19(1) of Regulation No 6/2002 in various Member States, the correct approach for identifying the event giving rise to the damage is not to refer to each alleged act of infringement, but to make an overall assessment of that defendant’s conduct in order to determine the place where the initial act of infringement at the origin of that conduct was committed or threatened.’

At 108 the Court rules what this means in the case at issue: ‘the place where the event giving rise to the damage occurred within the meaning of Article 8(2) of [Rome II] is the place where the process of putting the offer for sale online by that operator on its website was activated’.

At 99 however it warns expressly that this finding must be distinguished as being issued within the specific context of infringement of intellectual property rights: Regulation 6/2002 as well as Rome II in its specific intention for IP rights, aims to guarantee predictability and unity of a singly connecting factor. This is a very important caveat: for while this approach by the CJEU assists with predictability, it also hands means for applicable law shopping and, were the Court’s approach for locus delicti commissi in IP infringement extended to jurisdiction, for forum shopping, too.

Geert.

(Handbook of) EU private international law, 2nd ed. 2016, Chapter 2, Heading 2.2.11.2; Chapter 3.