Opinion of Advocate General Jääskinen in Case C-5/11 Donner

The case I wish to highlight in this post is the Opinion of Advocate General Jääskinen in Case C-5/11 Donner, concerning a rather crafty and ingenious attempt by Mr. Donner to circumvent the application of certain German copyright laws. Mr. Donner sold various types of ‘Bauhaus’ furniture which was protected by German copyright, but not protected by Italian copyright. Although Mr Donner targeted German customers through advertisements in Germany and a website in German, he sold these products not in Germany but from a warehouse in Italy through cooperation with an Italian company called Dimensione. Those products could nonetheless be delivered optionally to German customers by the Italian company Imspem (owned by Mr. Donner).

One of the questions the Advocate General answers in this case is whether the conduct of Mr. Donner leads to ‘distribution to the public’, that is the German public, within the meaning of the Copyright Directive. Mr. Donner, of course, considers that these products were distributed to the public in Italy, not in Germany. The Copyright Directive provides in Article 4(1) that ‘Member States shall provide for authors, in respect of the original of their works or of copies thereof, the exclusive right to authorise or prohibit any form of distribution to the public by sale or otherwise’. The Advocate General considers that the products were distributed to the public in Germany:

55.      In the situation of cross border distance selling arrangements, the assessment of whether copies are made available to the public in the Member State where enforcement of copyright is sought must be based on the criteria elaborated by the Court in L’Oréal and Others. (38) If a seller targets consumers in a given Member State and creates or makes available to them a specific delivery arrangement and method of payment that enables consumers to purchase copies of copyright protected works in that Member State, then there is distribution by sale in that Member State. (39) The existence of a German language website, the content of Dimensione’s marketing material, and their sustained cooperation with Inspem, as an undertaking engaged in sales and delivery to Germany, all point toward a targeted exercise. What is important is whether the seller has created a targeted sales and delivery channel for buyers to acquire works that are copyright protected in the buyer’s Member State.

56.      In this respect the way the delivery of the copies is organised is of secondary importance. There is distribution by sale from Member State A to the targeted public in Member State B even if under the distribution scheme the copies of the works are delivered by mail or a distribution service. But the extent of the involvement of the carrier in the selling arrangement affects the question whether the carrier is to be considered as a participant in the distribution scheme or merely an intermediary referred to in Article 8(3) of the Copyright Directive, (40) whose services are used by a third party. Such an intermediary may be made subject to injunctions, but not to sanctions under Article 8(1) of the Copyright Directive and the corresponding provision in Article 11 of the Enforcement Directive.