The Netherlands: the country of cross-border injunctions in IP

Een bijdrage van Tobias Cohen Jehoram, Jan Pieter Hustinx, Gertjan Kuipers, Koen Limperg en Ilja Morée, De Brauw Blackstone Westbroek N.V..

Part 1: Patents, trademarks and design rights
Part 2: Copyright and Advertising
Part 3: Pre-trial cross-border measures

Part 1: Patents, trademarks and design rights
Intellectual property ("IP") rights are territorially limited rights. To enforce your IP rights in different territories (usually countries) you traditionally have to address courts in each territory separately. Dutch courts have allowed exceptions to this rule by granting cross-border injunctions covering other countries as well. This has been a trend with the Dutch courts since 1989[i] but met with considerable criticism and was rejected by the Court of Justice of the European Union ("CJ") in 2006. Recently, however, the winds seem to have changed once again: the cross-border practice has been endorsed conditionally by the CJ. Although the CJ case law mainly pertains to patent rights, we see cross-border injunctions being granted in other fields of IP as well, notably in trademark and designs cases. This newsletter provides an overview of the possibility to obtain cross-border injunctions in the Netherlands for the aforementioned IP rights. It is the first in a series of three; in part two we will address cross-border measures for other IP rights (such as copyright) and in part three we will give an update on 'pre-trial cross-border enforcement' and securing evidence in the Netherlands for the infringement of IP rights outside the Netherlands.

1. Cross-border measures in IP cases - legal background
2. Patents: Dutch cross-border measures against foreign defendants accepted
3. Trademark and Design Rights: Dutch courts grant cross-border injunctions
4. Practical consequences and conclusion

Part 2: Copyright and Advertising
This is the second of a series of newsletters on the granting of cross-border injunctions regarding (territorially limited) intellectual property ("IP") rights by Dutch courts. Last week, in Part 1, we gave a general introduction and focused on cross-border injunctions for patents, trademarks and design rights. In this part we address cross-border measures for copyright, other IP rights and advertising law. In Part 3 we will give an update on 'pre-trial cross-border enforcement' and securing evidence in the Netherlands for the infringement of IP rights outside the Netherlands.

1. Copyright Law: material law EU countries harmonised by Copyright Directive
2. Advertising Law: maximum harmonisation
3. Other IP rights
4. Practical consequences and conclusion

Part 3: Pre-trial cross-border measures
This is the third and last of a series of newsletters on the granting of cross-border injunctions regarding (territorially limited) intellectual property ("IP") rights by Dutch courts. In part 1, we gave a general introduction and focused on cross-border injunctions for patents, trademarks and design rights. In the second part we addressed cross-border measures for copyright, other IP rights and advertising law. In this part we give an update on 'pre-trial cross-border enforcement' and securing evidence in the Netherlands for the infringement of IP rights outside the Netherlands.

1. Anti-Piracy Regulation: stopping infringement at Europe's borders
2. Securing "cross-border evidence"
3. Practical consequences and conclusion
4. Summary of cross-border jurisdiction in IP cases