Earlier this week, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) clarified the extent to which copyright holders can bring legal claims for online infringement before courts based in their home country, even when the illegal copying and subsequent sales of the material occurred in a second or even third country.
The case concerned a claim by a composer and performer, Peter Pinckney, a French resident, who claimed to be the author of twelve songs, which were made into a vinyl disk in the 1970s.
Mr Pinckney brought a claim against Austrian company KDG Mediatech AG (“Mediatech”), which he claimed had copied without his authorisation his songs onto a CD and, to add insult to injury, copies of the CDs were then sold by two UK companies via websites accessible by Mr Pinckney in France.
While the French First Instance Court considered that it had jurisdiction to rule on the matter, the French Court of Appeal overturned this on the grounds that the country of residence of the defendant was Austria and the damage had occurred outside France.
However, Mr Pinckney appealed the decision, as he considered that this ruling breached the provisions of Article 5(3) Brussels I Regulation. The case was therefore passed to the CJEU because the Austrian firm appealed on the grounds that only courts in Austria or in the country where the sales occurred – i.e. the UK – could hear the case.
Having mulled over the decision during the summer, the CJEU ruled provisionally that national courts within the EU have jurisdiction to hear such cases so long as the copyright for the works concerned applies in that country and so long as the infringing goods, sold from another EU member state, are “accessible” via the internet from within that country.