Supreme Court Decision of February 26, 2025, Farola Latina (ECLI:ES:TS:2025:735)
1. Facts
The ruling stems from a lawsuit filed in Barcelona by a Spanish architect against the company Ashghal and the State of Qatar for infringement of intellectual property rights regarding a specific design for a “LATINA” model streetlight. The plaintiff contended that her work had been“copied and counterfeited”by the defendants in the installation of streetlights on Al Waab Avenue in Doha (Qatar). In addition to the removal of the streetlights, the lawsuit sought damages of 100,000 euros.
LATINA streetlight installed on Avenida de Barcelona (Terrassa). Source: Urbidermis
The dispute dated back to 2005, when initial contacts began between Santa & Cole (a company that licensed the plaintiff’s designs in several countries) and Ashgal, a public entity in Qatar, with the aim of carrying out a comprehensive lighting project for Al Waab Avenue in Doha. The failure of the lengthy negotiations ultimately led to the filing of the lawsuit.
The defendants raised a motion to decline jurisdiction on the grounds of lack of international jurisdiction, which was granted by the court. The plaintiff appealed this decision, and the Provincial Court issued an order on March 12, 2015 (ECLI:ES:APB:2015:1256A), reversing it and dismissing the motion to decline jurisdiction.
Once the lawsuit resumed, the court partially granted the claim, reducing the damages to 50,000 euros (ECLI:ES:JMB:2018:8060).
After both parties appealed the judgment, the Fifteenth Chamber of the Provincial Court of Barcelona issued a ruling on March 6, 2020 (ECLI:ES:APB:2020:2644), in which it partially upheld both appeals and upheld the judgment on the following terms: the judgment is limited to Ashgal, and the State of Qatar is acquitted; only the right of authorship and the right to the integrity of the work are found to have been infringed, but not the right of publication; the amount of damages is set at 100,000 euros.
The defendants have appealed the appellate court's ruling to the Supreme Court in a brief that raises 33 grounds of procedural violation and 4 grounds for cassation.
2. Statements
The first issue raised in the appeal is a violation of the provisions governing the scope of Spanish jurisdiction ( Article 52.1.11 of the Civil Procedure Act).
The Supreme Court acknowledges that the reasoning set forth in the appealed judgment demonstrates“a thorough understanding of the case law of the CJEU,”but finds that“the inaccuracy of some of its premises leads to an incorrect conclusion (affirming the international jurisdiction of Spanish courts).”
As a preliminary matter, the judgment notes that, although Council Regulation (EC) No. 44/2001 of December 22, 2000, on jurisdiction and the recognition and enforcement of judgments in civil and commercial matters (hereinafter “Regulation 44/2001” or the “Brussels I Regulation”) is not directly applicable, the case law of the Court of Justice interpreting it is useful because the rules on international jurisdiction contained in the Organic Law on the Judiciary are based on the provisions of the 1968 Brussels Convention, which were incorporated, with few modifications, into Regulation 44/2001.
The Court of Justice’s judgment of October 3, 2013, Case C-170/12, Pinckney, citing earlier judgments, held that, as an exception to the fundamental principle set forth in Article 2(1) of Regulation 44/2001, which assigns jurisdiction to the courts of the Member State in whose territory the defendant is domiciled, Chapter II, Section 2, of that Regulation provides for a number of special rules on jurisdiction, including that set forth in Article 5(3) of the Regulation.
Since the jurisdiction of the courts of the place where the harmful event occurred or may occur is a special rule of jurisdiction, it must be interpreted strictly, and no interpretation that goes beyond the cases explicitly provided for in the Regulation is permitted.
The phrase“the place where the harmful event occurred or may occur,”which appears in Article 5(3) of the Regulation, refers both to the place where the damage occurred and to the place of the causal event that gave rise to that damage, so that the action may be brought, at the plaintiff’s discretion, before the courts of either of those two places.
The rule of jurisdiction set forth in Article 5(3) of the Regulation is based on the existence of a particularly close connection between the dispute and the court of the place where the harmful event occurred or may occur, which justifies conferring jurisdiction on that court for reasons of the proper administration of justice and the proper conduct of the proceedings.
The Court of Justice has also held, in its September 19, 1995, judgment in Case C-364/93, Marinari, that, even if it is accepted that the concept of“the place where the harmful event occurred,”within the meaning of Article 5(3) of the Convention (equivalent to Article 5(3) of Regulation 44/2001), may refer both to the place where the damage occurred and to the place of the event giving rise to the damage, that concept cannot be interpreted so broadly as to encompass any place where the harmful consequences of an event that has already caused actual damage in another place may be felt.
Furthermore, in its June 10, 2004, judgment in Case C-168/02, Kronhofer, the Court held that this provision must be interpreted to mean that the phrase“the place where the harmful event occurred”does not include the place of the plaintiff’s domicile where the“center of his or her assets”is located, simply because the plaintiff suffered financial loss at that location as a result of the loss of a portion of his assets that occurred and was suffered in another Contracting State.
The judgment goes on to note that the criterion of the plaintiff’s forum ( forum actoris ) is not recognized under the Brussels Convention or, consequently, under the Brussels I Regulation, which have opted for the general rule of jurisdiction: actor sequitur forum rei [the plaintiff must follow the defendant’s forum], without prejudice to certain special rules of jurisdiction, including those set forth in Article 5(3) of the Convention and the Regulation, for actions arising out of torts and quasi-torts, which include those involving non-contractual liability, such as those arising from the infringement of intellectual property rights.
The reason why the Court of Justice, beginning with its October 25, 2011, judgment in Cases C-509/09 and C-161/10, eDate, recognized the jurisdiction of the place where the victim’s center of main interests was located in cases where Article 5(3) of Regulation 44/2001 was applicable, was not so much the nature of the rights for which protection was sought as the ubiquity of the manifestation of the harm, given that the infringement of personality rights had occurred through online publications. As stated in that judgment, the publication of content on a website differs from territorial dissemination through a print medium in that the former, in principle, seeks to ensure the ubiquity of such content. This content can be accessed instantly by an indefinite number of Internet users worldwide, regardless of the publisher’s intent regarding access beyond its Member State of residence and outside its control.
That, and no other, is the reason why the Court of Justice recognized the jurisdiction of the State where the victim had the center of his or her main interests—which is generally, though not necessarily (judgment of October 17, 2017, Case C-194/16, Bolagsupplysningen OÜ), will be the State in which the victim was domiciled. Given the universal nature of the World Wide Web, the offensive publication would have been accessible in that State, and it is there that the greatest harm to the victim would have occurred, as it is the place where the victim would be best known and, therefore, where the victim’s reputation would have been most harmed.
However, when the offensive content has not been published on the Internet but in a traditional medium (specifically, in a print magazine), the Court of Justice has upheld the traditional approach of holding that the “forum loci delicti” under Article 5(3) of the Convention and the Brussels I Regulation is both the State where the magazine is published and the place where the causative event occurred (whose courts have jurisdiction to hear all actions brought by the victim and, specifically, the claim for compensation for the full amount of the damage), as well as the States in which the publication has been distributed when the victim is known there (as the place where the damage manifested itself), which have jurisdiction only to hear claims for compensation for the damage occurring in that State—for which it is relevant, for example, how the magazine was distributed in that State. This is stated in the judgment of March 7, 1995, Case C-68/93, Shevill.
The ruling concludes by stating that, in the case at issue, the infringement of the plaintiff’s moral rights did not result from the unauthorized reproduction and public communication of her work on the Internet. Rather, it resulted from a reproduction of the work on a traditional medium—specifically, streetlights installed on a public road—and the public communication of the infringing work took place at that location, which was in the State of Qatar.
Therefore, given that both the causal event and the manifestation of the damage occurred outside Spain, the fact that the plaintiff has her center of main interests in Spain and that it is in this country where she has carried out her creative work does not constitute sufficient connections to confer international jurisdiction on the Spanish courts and, specifically, on the Commercial Court of Barcelona, before which the complaint was filed.
As a result of the foregoing, the grounds for the extraordinary appeal based on a procedural violation are upheld, and the conviction is overturned.
3. Comment
It is nearly impossible to summarize in just a few lines a 20-year-long dispute and a ruling by the Spanish Supreme Court that resolves an appeal for procedural violations based on 33 grounds and a cassation appeal based on four additional grounds. But the fact is that the Supreme Court has completely cleared the way by upholding the first of the grounds for challenge—the Spanish court’s lack of international jurisdiction—thereby rendering it unnecessary to consider all the remaining grounds.
At this point, the ruling addresses the thorny issue of determining the limits of Spanish jurisdiction over intellectual property rights infringements when the infringing act occurs outside of Spain. The Supreme Court provides an exhaustive review of the case law of the Court of Justice, which interprets the general principle that favors granting jurisdiction to the courts of the place where the harmful act occurred or could occur.
To this end, the ruling notes that this criterion must be interpreted narrowly; that there must be a particularly close connection between the dispute and the court; that jurisdiction cannot be extended to any place where the harmful consequences of an act that has already caused actual damage in another location may be felt; that the legislature’s preferences do not include the plaintiff’s place of residence, but rather the forum loci delicti; and that an exception to this general rule is justified only for offenses committed via the Internet, but not for those committed in a traditional manner.
The fact that, in the case at hand, the infringement consists of the installation of streetlights on a public street in a city outside Spain is sufficient for the Supreme Court to deny the Spanish court’s international jurisdiction. One might wonder to what extent this ruling requires—or does not require—Spanish authors whose moral rights are infringed outside Spain to always litigate in countries as far away as Qatar.
Carlos Morán, Partner , Legal Department