Tag: British Airways v Sindicato Espanol de Pilotos de Lineas Aereas

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Rolex v Blomqvist. ECJ confirms irrelevance of ‘focus and target’ or ‘direction’ in intellectual property cases.

After its withholding of mere accessibility of a site as a jurisdictional trigger for copyright infringement in Pinckney, the ECJ has now accepted that the mere acquisition of a good by a person domiciled in an EU Member State, suffices to trigger the application of the EU Customs Regulation’s provisions on counterfeit and pirated goods. It is not necessary, in addition, for the goods at issue to have been the subject, prior to the sale, of an offer for sale or advertising targeting consumers of that State.

In Case C-98/13 Martin Blomqvist v Rolex Mr Blomqvist, a resident of Denmark, ordered a watch described as a Rolex from a Chinese on-line shop. The order was placed and paid for through the English website of the seller. The seller sent the watch from Hong Kong by post. The parcel was inspected by the customs authorities on arrival in Denmark. They suspended the customs clearance of the watch, suspecting that it was a counterfeit version of the original Rolex watch and that there had been a breach of copyright over the model concerned. In accordance with the procedure laid down by the customs regulation, Rolex then requested the continued suspension of customs clearance, having established that the watch was in fact counterfeit, and asked Mr Blomqvist to consent to the destruction of the watch by the customs authorities. Mr Blomqvist refused to consent to the destruction of the watch, contending that he had purchased it legally. Is there in the present case any distribution to the public, within the meaning of the copyright directive, and any use in the course of trade, within the meaning of the trade mark directive and the trade mark regulation?

The ECJ re-iterated earlier case-law (in particular L’Oreal /E-bay) that the mere fact that a website is accessible from the territory covered by the trade mark is not a sufficient basis for concluding that the offers for sale displayed there are targeted at consumers in the EU. However proof that the goods are intended to be put on sale in the European Union, is being provided, inter alia, where it turns out that the goods have been sold to a customer in the European Union, such as clearly in the case at issue.

That sales to the EU have taken place is enough. Proof that EU consumers were actually targeted is not required – at least not with a view to triggering intellectual property protection (cf consumer protection under i.a. the jurisdiction Regulation).

In the view of the EU of course this is not an ‘extraterritorial’ application of EU law: the territorial link is firmly established through the customer’s domicile.

Geert.

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Of Vikings, airlines and trade unions – The High Court in British Airways leaves a treasure trove of questions on ‘civil and commercial’

In  British Airways v Sindicato Espanol de Pilotos de Lineas Aereas – SEPLA, crucial consideration was whether the court had jurisdiction under the Brussels I Regulation to determine the claim brought by BA against SEPLA, a Spanish trade union, for damages and declaratory and injunctive relief alleging that strikes of Spanish airline pilots organised by SEPLA were unlawful under Spanish law in that they were in breach of the Claimants’ right to freedom of establishment and to provide cross border services under Articles 49 and 56 TFEU. The international federation of airline pilots association acted as anchor defendant (being domiciled in the UK at the time the action was introduced (it had since moved to Canada) and the case against both arguably being closely linked within the meaning of Article 6 of the Jurisdiction Regulation).

The High Court accepted the ‘knock-out point’ of defendant: that the matter was not ‘civil and commercial’ and therefore not within the scope of application of the Regulation. Field J argued with reference to the ECJ’s judgment in Viking (or more specifically, the AG’s Opinion in same) that ‘it remains the case that the source of the fundamental freedoms are treaty provisions imposing obligations on states‘, and that ‘a court having to decide whether SEPLA was in breach of Articles 49 and/or 56 TFEU will have to conduct a sensitive balancing exercise in which it weighs SEPLA’s constitutional right to strike and the fundamental right to strike which forms part of the general principles of Community Law against the fundamental freedoms enshrined in Articles 49 and 56. In my judgment, such an exercise will involve a resort to notions of public law rather than to private law.‘

I am not so sure. Firstly, the horizontal (i.e. between individuals) direct effect of the Treaty Articles concerned is quite established. Moreover, under the Eurocontrol and subsequent case-law formula, the public authority (here: merely a private organisation, a trade union, perhaps carrying out duties of a quasi-public law nature (the right to strike)) involved needs to have acted iure imperii. It is only if the legal relationship (not: the underlying applicable law) between the parties to the action is of a public law nature, giving one of them extraordinary authority which the other lacks, that the Regulation may not apply. There was no indication that the trade union in the specific case acted in some kind of iure imperii matter. This was not acte claire I would have thought, but the High Court evidently thought otherwise.

Geert.