EUPillar Futebol Club Porto SAD and others v Sporting Exchange Ltd and others - C.10.0094.F

Summary

The claimants argue that the Belgian courts are competent to take cognisance of the damage to their rights, since the websites of the defendants allow to place bets in Belgium without limitation. In the eDate Advertising case, the Court of Justice of the European Union reminded us that “it is settled case-law that the rule of special jurisdiction laid down, by way of derogation from the principle of jurisdiction of the courts of the place of domicile of the defendant, in Article 5(3) of the Regulation is based on the existence of a particularly close connecting factor between the dispute and the courts of the place where the harmful event occurred, which justifies the attribution of jurisdiction to those courts for reasons relating to the sound administration of justice and the efficacious conduct of proceedings” and decided that “Article 5(3) of the Regulation must be interpreted as meaning that, in the event of an alleged infringement of personality rights by means of content placed online on an internet website, the person who considers that his rights have been infringed has the option of bringing an action for liability, in respect of all the damage caused, either before the courts of the Member State in which the publisher of that content is established or before the courts of the Member State in which the centre of his interests is based. That person may also, instead of an action for liability in respect of all the damage caused, bring his action before the courts of each Member State in the territory of which content placed online is or has been accessible. Those courts have jurisdiction only in respect of the damage caused in the territory of the Member State of the court seised.” (Joined Cases C‑509/09 and C‑161/1) The Court of Appeal of Liège, which was aware of the above principles, had ruled that “the fact that the contested websites are accessible in Belgium does not mean that there is a particularly close connecting factor between the dispute and the courts of the place where the harmful event occurred, which justifies the attribution of jurisdiction to those courts”, that the websites – which have a .com-extension and no .be-extension – are accessible to the Belgian market in the same way as they are to other internet users, that the number of bets placed by Belgian users is tiny in comparison to the total number of bets and thus that the commercial relationship of the defendants with Belgium is negligible. However, these considerations are irrelevant. The Court of Cassation decides that the Court of Appeal of Liège was wrong to accept the objections to its jurisdiction raised by the defendants. The Court of Cassation rescinds the judgment and sends it to the Court of Appeal of Brussels for a ruling on the merits.