CJEU sets rules for online copyright infringement hearings
A court in an EU member state in which an allegedly copyright-infringing work is accessible online can have the power to hear an infringement action concerning that work, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has ruled.
The judgment, issued yesterday (January 22), concerned the posting of copyrighted images online without the consent of the copyright owner.
Austrian woman Pez Hejduk had been in a dispute with German energy company EnergieAgentur.
Hejduk, an architectural photographer, permitted some of her photographs to be used as part of a conference organised by EnergieAgentur in 2004.
She claimed that after the conference, EnergieAgentur made those photographs available on its website for viewing and downloading without her consent and without providing a credit.
Hejduk sued EnergieAgentur for copyright infringement in the Handelsgericht Wien court in Vienna, seeking damages and an order requiring EnergieAgentur to pay for the publication of the judgment.
But EnergieAgentur claimed the website on which the photographs were available, which operates under a country-specific German top-level domain (.de), is not directed to Austria and so the damage did not occur in that member state. This meant an Austrian court should not hear the dispute, EnergieAgentur claimed.
The Handelsgericht Wien then asked the CJEU for a preliminary judgment on whether the mere accessibility of an allegedly copyright-infringing image on a website in a member state was enough to confer jurisdiction on courts there to hear an infringement action.
The CJEU said such courts do have jurisdiction as long as the work is accessible.
It said that article 5(3) of the EU’s Brussels I Regulation 2001—which covers the concept of where damage took place in relation to copyright infringement—must be interpreted as meaning that in the event of an allegation of copyright infringement, the court of a member state has jurisdiction to hear an action for damages.
But the CJEU added that courts in "the place where the damage occurred" only have jurisdiction to rule on the damage caused within their own member state.
Alastair Shaw, of counsel at law firm Hogan Lovells in London, told WIPR: "While it is not a ground breaking decision, it brings clarity to the law. It is a good decision for copyright owners"
