Our latest summaries of recent landmark rulings on the infringement and enforcement of intellectual property rights (IPRs) have been published on eSearch Case Law. This case-law collection contributes to the preparation of OBD Judges' Network events, where recent cases are regularly examined and discussed.

Due to the EUIPO’s ambition to create a ‘one stop shop’ for all case-law, the summaries are now exclusively published on eSearch Case Law. The OBD case law reports will no longer be updated, but past summaries remain available here (case-law webpage) and here.

New summaries

The CJEU issued a key decision on trade mark acquiescence.

• In Case C‑452/24 the CJEU provided guidance on the interpretation of Article 10 of Directive (EU) 2015/2436, ruling that a national principle of private law allowing the forfeiture of trade mark rights due to the inactivity of the proprietor may not restrict the exclusive rights conferred by a registered trade mark, in situations other than ‘acquiescence’ as harmonised in Articles 9 and 18 of the Directive.

Relevant national rulings on copyright have been identified.

• The Hamburg Local Division of the Unified Patent Court (UPC) found that the UPC, as a common court under Article 31 UPCA and Articles 71a–71b of the Brussels I Regulation, has jurisdiction over claims brought against defendants domiciled outside the EU, when the alleged infringement and resulting damage may occur in a UPCA Member State (summary available here).

• In France, the Court of Marseille (Tribunal judiciaire de Marseille) found that digital evidence, specifically cryptographic fingerprints anchored on the Bitcoin blockchain, constituted sufficient proof of the copyrights, notwithstanding the fact that the related seizure report was declared null and void due to procedural irregularities (summary available here).

• In Germany, the Higher Regional Court of Munich ruled that exhaustion under Article 15(1) EUTMR applies when the goods have been lawfully placed on the European Economic Area (EEA) market by the trade mark proprietor, through a transfer to the authorised retailer. Breaches of contractual distribution restrictions by authorised retailers may not prevent exhaustion (summary available here).

• In Germany, the Regional Court of Munich I (Landgericht München I) found that OpenAI’s generative AI development and deployment infringed copyright by memorising and reproducing song lyrics. In the court’s eyes, such memorisation constitutes reproduction under EU and German copyright law and falls outside the scope of the text and data mining (TDM) exception, which applies only to the initial analytical phase of AI model training. Moreover, given that OpenAI’s chatbot made the lyrics accessible to an unlimited public through simple prompts, OpenAI were deemed to be directly liable (summary available here).

Source: https://www.euipo.europa.eu/en/news/observatory/update-on-recent-european-case-law-on-infringement-and-enforcement-of-ip-rights