Summary
Under Art. 5(3) of Regulation (EC) No 44/2001 of 22 December 2000 (applicable to the case at issue), Italian courts have jurisdiction to hear the case brought by an Italian company seeking damages from a German company in relation to unfair competition practices by an ex employee of the former meant to provide the latter with know how and technical information gathered through some decades, as Italy is the place where the victim runs its business and, thus, where the breach of its rights occurred, the German company being allegedly liable in tort for de facto cooperating (by permitting the abusive use of its IT system) in the misappropriation of files containing industrial secrets and reserved information. No relevance to this purpose could be attributed to the place where the information fraudulently obtained were and will be used for the place where the harmful event occurred designate, as stated by the European Court of Justice, the place where the initial damage occurred and does not cover further harmful consequences.
The place where the victim has known about the illicit misappropriation of industrial secrets has also been improperly referred to, in the case at issue, by the court of first instance.