European Business Law, the fourth volume in our series, shows how the European authorities simultaneously abolish all restrictions on access to and exercise of economic activities and support the growth of domestic markets, through the harmonization the internal legislation or the enactment of genuinely unified regulations.

European Business Law

Under Article 24(4), the registration or validity of patents, trade marks, designs, or other similar rights falls within the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of the Member State in which the deposit or registration has been applied for, has taken place or is deemed to have taken place. 

Up to now, the Court of Justice has only ruled on proceedings concerned with the registration or validity of patents and defines the concept of proceedings “concerned with the registration or validity of patents” as an independent concept which covers all proceedings relating to the validity, existence or lapse of a patent, as well as those relating to an alleged right of priority by reason of an early deposit. Proceedings for infringement of a patent does not fall within the scope of application of Article 24(4) insofar as it is not concerned with the validity of a patent but on the respective rights in that allegedly infringed patent . Such is not the case according to the Court of Justice for proceedings to determine whether a person was correctly registered as the proprietor of a trade mark .

In the field of patents, a number of Member States have set up a system of specific judicial protection which reserves these types of cases to specialized courts and the delivery of patents involves the national authorities' action. Thus, the exclusive jurisdiction conferred by Article 24(4), which is justified by the sound administration of justice, is applicable whatever the form of proceedings in which the issue of a patent's validity is raised, be it by way of an action or a plea in objection, at the time the case is brought or at a later stage .

Case 288/82 Duijnstee [1983] ECR 3663, LawLex200900001501JBJ.

Case C-341/16 Hanssen Beleggingen BV, Judgment of 5 October 2017, LawLex201700001593JBJ: a dispute on the question of the individual estate to which an intellectual property right belongs which is not, generally, closely linked in fact and law to the place where that right has been registered, is not subject to Article 24(4) of Regulation No 1215/2012 insofar as there is no dispute regarding the registration of the trade mark as such or its validity.

Case C-4/03 GAT [2006] ECR I-6509, LawLex200900000681JBJ: a court seized of an action for infringement or for a declaration that there has been infringement, which, as an assumption, is not the court of the Member State in which the place of delivery of the patent is situated, cannot, even indirectly, establish the invalidity of a patent without undermining the binding nature of the rule of exclusive jurisdiction laid down in Article 24(4). Furthermore, it must declare of its own motion that it has no jurisdiction in favor of the court which has exclusive jurisdiction (See Regulation No 1215/2012, Article 27).

345. Industrial property