The Law Applicable to Non-Contractual Obligations Arising from Copyright Infringements in the Light of the Rome II Regulation

Abstract

The intersection of intellectual property law and private international law has increasingly attracted the attention of commentators over the last thirty years. From the various intellectual property rights, copyright seems to cause the most challenging problems for scholars, legislators, and law enforcers thanks to its territorial yet universal nature and its widespread international and digital use. The main source of difficulties is the infringement of copyright and related rights in the context of online activities on the one hand, as these rights are automatically protected and yet territorial in nature. On the other hand, thanks to the ubiquity of the World Wide Web, infringing behaviour on the Internet and its consequences are usually omnipresent. The present study aims, therefore, to analyse the special conflict-of-law rule of the Rome II Regulation applicable to non-contractual obligations arising from the infringement of copyright and related rights.