Directive 2004/48/EC on the enforcement of intellectual property rights harmonises various aspects of civil court procedure and remedies as applied to most types of intellectual property in the European Union. Despite having now been in effect for over 10 years, it has until recently featured remarkably little in EU intellectual property litigation and there have been very few references to the Court of Justice that have exclusively concerned it. Thus there has been no opportunity to cast light on what is meant by the rather vague language in which it is expressed. This situation is now starting to change, and the various controversies the subject of the current references to the Court of Justice under it are reviewed in this article. The results of this process of interpretation will not only affect all national courts hearing intellectual property cases throughout the EU; they will also bind the new Unified Patents Court when that comes into force, despite the fact that in some cases the corresponding wording of the underlying Agreement which establishes the new Unified Patents Court, and which wording is based on the Enforcement Directive, deviates from it.
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Originally published in the Journal of Intellectual Property Rights, Volume 20, July 2015, pp264-269
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