Post by account_disabled on Feb 20, 2024 0:35:57 GMT -5
The ruling, however, declares that a request for information such as that of Mircom, formulated at a stage prior to the exercise of jurisdictional action, cannot, due to that circumstance alone, be considered inadmissible . But that doesn't mean it can't be considered abusive.
For the ruling, the possible finding of such abuse falls fully within the scope of the assessment of the facts of the main case and is, therefore, within the jurisdiction of the referring court. To this end, it could, among other things, examine the operations that Mircom follows, analyze the way in which said company proposes friendly solutions to alleged offenders and check whether it really takes legal action if the Fax Lists friendly solution is rejected. Likewise, it could examine whether, in light of all the particular circumstances of the present case, it is evident that Mircom is actually trying, under the pretext of proposing friendly solutions due to the alleged infringements, to obtain financial income from the mere ownership of the users in question to a peer-to-peer network such as the one in this case, without specifically trying to combat the copyright infringements that that network causes.
In this context, the CJEU answers the second preliminary question by stating that Directive 2004/48 must be interpreted in the sense that a person who, by virtue of a contract, is the owner of certain intellectual property rights that, however, does not use itself , but is limited to claiming compensation for damages from alleged infringers, may benefit, in principle, from the measures, procedures and remedies provided for in Chapter II of said Directive , unless it is proven, in accordance with the general obligation provided in article 3, section 2, of that and based on a global and detailed analysis, that its claim is abusive. In particular, in the case of a request for information based on Article 8 of the aforementioned Directive, such a request must also be rejected if it is unjustified or not proportionate , an issue that must be verified by the referring court.
To answer the third and fourth preliminary question , the Court begins by pointing out that the main case contemplates two different processing of personal data; namely, one that was initially carried out by Media Protector on behalf of Mircom, in the context of peer-to-peer networks , consisting of recording the IP addresses of users whose Internet connections were supposedly used , at a certain time, to upload protected works in the aforementioned networks, and another that, according to Mircom, Telenet must carry out in a later phase, consisting, on the one hand, of identifying these users by comparing the aforementioned IP addresses with those that, at that same moment, Telenet had attributed to the aforementioned users to carry out said upload and, on the other hand, to communicate to Mircom the names and addresses of those same users.
In its fourth question , the referring court requests an answer on the possible justification, in light of Article 6, paragraph 1, first subparagraph, letter f), of Regulation 2016/679, only of the first of the treatments already carried out.
On the other hand, in its third question , it wants to know, in essence, whether the circumstances set out in its first and second questions are relevant to assessing the fair balance between, on the one hand, intellectual property rights and, on the other, the protection of private life and personal data, in particular, in the assessment of proportionality.
For the ruling, the possible finding of such abuse falls fully within the scope of the assessment of the facts of the main case and is, therefore, within the jurisdiction of the referring court. To this end, it could, among other things, examine the operations that Mircom follows, analyze the way in which said company proposes friendly solutions to alleged offenders and check whether it really takes legal action if the Fax Lists friendly solution is rejected. Likewise, it could examine whether, in light of all the particular circumstances of the present case, it is evident that Mircom is actually trying, under the pretext of proposing friendly solutions due to the alleged infringements, to obtain financial income from the mere ownership of the users in question to a peer-to-peer network such as the one in this case, without specifically trying to combat the copyright infringements that that network causes.
In this context, the CJEU answers the second preliminary question by stating that Directive 2004/48 must be interpreted in the sense that a person who, by virtue of a contract, is the owner of certain intellectual property rights that, however, does not use itself , but is limited to claiming compensation for damages from alleged infringers, may benefit, in principle, from the measures, procedures and remedies provided for in Chapter II of said Directive , unless it is proven, in accordance with the general obligation provided in article 3, section 2, of that and based on a global and detailed analysis, that its claim is abusive. In particular, in the case of a request for information based on Article 8 of the aforementioned Directive, such a request must also be rejected if it is unjustified or not proportionate , an issue that must be verified by the referring court.
To answer the third and fourth preliminary question , the Court begins by pointing out that the main case contemplates two different processing of personal data; namely, one that was initially carried out by Media Protector on behalf of Mircom, in the context of peer-to-peer networks , consisting of recording the IP addresses of users whose Internet connections were supposedly used , at a certain time, to upload protected works in the aforementioned networks, and another that, according to Mircom, Telenet must carry out in a later phase, consisting, on the one hand, of identifying these users by comparing the aforementioned IP addresses with those that, at that same moment, Telenet had attributed to the aforementioned users to carry out said upload and, on the other hand, to communicate to Mircom the names and addresses of those same users.
In its fourth question , the referring court requests an answer on the possible justification, in light of Article 6, paragraph 1, first subparagraph, letter f), of Regulation 2016/679, only of the first of the treatments already carried out.
On the other hand, in its third question , it wants to know, in essence, whether the circumstances set out in its first and second questions are relevant to assessing the fair balance between, on the one hand, intellectual property rights and, on the other, the protection of private life and personal data, in particular, in the assessment of proportionality.