Click here for Judgment (approximately 5 pages); click here for press release (approximately 2 pages)

The European Court of Justice (ECJ), on October 3, 2013, issued a judgment in the Pinckney v. KDG Mediatech AG case.  The ECJ has qualified a general rule that courts have jurisdiction to hear a dispute either in the Member State where the defendant is domiciled or the Member State where the alleged harmful event occurred.  Mr. Pinckney, a resident of France, discovered that an Austrian company, without his authority, had reproduced songs from his album and that companies from the United Kingdom were marketing the songs on websites accessible from Mr. Pinckney’s home.  Mr. Pinckney brought a copyright infringement action against the Austrian company in French court. The company moved to dismiss, arguing that only Austria (country of defendant’s domicile) or the UK (country where the alleged infringement occurred) would have jurisdiction.  In interpreting Article 5(3) of Council Regulation (EC) No 44/2001 on Jurisdiction and the Recognition and Enforcement of Judgments in Civil and Commercial Matters, the Court ruled that, when a Member State protects infringement of copyrights, the courts of that State have “jurisdiction to hear an action to establish liability brought by the author of a work against a company established in another Member State and which has, in the latter State, reproduced that work on a material support which is subsequently sold by companies established in a third Member State through an internet site also accessible with the jurisdiction of the court seised.” In such circumstances, however, the “court has jurisdiction only to determine the damage caused in the Member State within which it is situated.”