The Commercial Court of Liège (the "Liège Court") applied the new territorial jurisdiction rules for patent cases and referred an action for annulment to the Brussels Commercial Court.

The judgment of the Liège court arose in an on-going series of disputes between SPRL GE Healthcare ("GEHC"), the co-owner of an EU patent with Université de Liège ("ULiège") and Université Libre de Bruxelles ("ULB"). GEHC also owns EU trade marks and trade mark licenses (the "Trade Marks").

GEHC claimed that SPRL Optimized Radiochemical Applications ("ORA") had copied the Patent and the Trademarks, and filed a unilateral request for descriptive seizure before the President of the Dutch-speaking Commercial Court of Brussels. After the request was granted and the expert designated, the descriptive seizure took place on 13 October 2014. The expert then handed in his report on 12 December 2014. Based on this report, GEHC brought, on 12 January 2015, an action for infringement against ORA before the Brussels Commercial Court, on the basis of Article XI-337 of the Commercial Code.

Meanwhile, on 30 December 2014, ORA had brought an action for annulment of the Patent against GEHC, ULiège and ULB before the Liège Commercial Court. The Liège Court was chosen based on the rules of jurisdiction applicable before the entry into force of Article XI-337 of the Commercial Code. GEHC, ULiège and ULB challenged the jurisdiction of the Liège Court. On 20 February 2015, the Liège Court declined jurisdiction and referred the case to the Brussels Court for the following reasons.

First, Article XI-337 of the Code of Economic Law came into force on 1 January 2015 and confers on the Brussels Court exclusive jurisdiction to hear patent cases. The Liège Court had to assess whether the new law applied to the case at hand. Article 3 of the Judicial Code states that new laws on judicial organisation, jurisdiction and procedure apply to on-going proceedings, without it being necessary for the court which was properly seized to decline its jurisdiction. Since the writ of summons of 30 December 2014 predates the entry into force of the new legislation, the case at hand was properly brought before the Liège Court. Yet, according to the case law of the Belgian Supreme Court (Hof van Cassatie/Cour de Cassation), a modification of the rules on jurisdiction will be applicable to on-going proceedings if there has not yet been a decision on the merits determining jurisdiction. The Liège Court found that this case law was pertinent to the case at hand.

Second, the Brussels Court has had exclusive jurisdiction over EU trade mark cases since 2007. Therefore, because the questions relating to the infringement of the Trade Marks and the Patent are closely related, the Liège Court found that referring the case to the Brussels Court was justified.

Third, GEHC's claims before the Brussels Court and ORA's claims before the Liège Court have the same object as well as the same cause and concern the same parties acting in the same capacity. In such cases, Article 365, paragraph 3 of the Judicial Code provides that if one of the claims falls under the exclusive jurisdiction of a Court, only that Court has jurisdiction to decide on all the claims.

As a consequence, the Liège Court referred the case to the Brussels Court.

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