©-LAW

Will this Kat be competent to judge? When it comes to determining international jurisdiction in proceedings resulting from the alleged online infringement of an EU trade mark, where is the place of infringement, as per Article 97(5) of the  2009 EU Trade Mark Regulation  (EUTMR, now Article 125(5) of the  2017 Regulation ), located?  This was the question at the heart of the referral in  AMS Neve , C-172/18 , which the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) decided today.  More specifically, the question referred by the Court of Appeal (England and Wales) related to a situation in which the defendant is established and domiciled in Member State A (in this case, Spain) and advertised and offered for sales infringing goods on a website targeted at traders and consumers in Member State B (in this case, the UK). Could courts in Member State B have jurisdiction to hear a claim for infringement of an EU trade mark?  I...

Oh, tell me more about jurisdiction in IP infringement cases Over the past couple of years the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has been  busy addressing the question of jurisdiction  [also an evergreen topic of conversation in any situation, notes Merpel]  for alleged online infringements of copyright: just think of the decisions in  Pinckney   [Katposts  here ]  and  Hejduk   [ here ] , in which the CJEU held that accessibility of the allegedly infringing content is one of the criteria to determine jurisdiction within Article 7(2) of the  Brussels I Regulation recast . But what about online infringements of what are soon to be called EU trade marks? Article 97 of the  EU Trade Mark Regulation  (EUTMR, the content of which will not be substantially affected when  Regulation 2015/2424  enters into force in March  [ here  and  here ] ) sets a number of grounds t...