‘Iurisdictio’ and ‘Lex Causae’ Issues in Cross-Border IPR Infringements and Crimes in Cyberspace – a European Perspective

Abstract

Due to every-growing cyberspace and its’ reach across the world (especially e-commerce); a single person has enough power in his hands that it can impact different persons and entities simultaneously who resides in different parts of the world. Now, when an international civil or commercial dispute arises over internet or crime is committed by a foreign person in cyber-world, affecting individual/s of one country or different countries, and the matter is brought for adjudication to the court of a particular country, then in such situations, it is necessary for that particular court to decide two issues; first, whether the court has the competent jurisdiction over the defendant and second, what is the substantive-law applicable to the proceedings of the case (i.e. the choice of applicable law). These aforesaid issues are usually governed by applying/interpreting the principles of Private International laws by the national court. However, in Europe, some EU regulations has already been enacted to bring uniformity and legal certainty in member-states of European Union to resolve these issues in most of the matters of civil or commercial nature including contractual and non-contractual obligations and other torts. However, there are no EU laws governing the aforesaid issues in matters related to ‘cybercrimes’. Hence, the purpose of this essay is to explain/cite the rules related to ‘jurisdiction’ (iurisdictio in Latin) and ‘choice of applicable law’ (Lex Causae in Latin) in matters of ‘IPR infringement’ in one part, and to find/propose the suitable rules, to solve the aforesaid issues in matters of cybercrimes in the second part.