The Territorial Effect of Sanctions Under the Community Trade Marks Regulation: The ECJ Delivers its Judgment in DHL v Chronopost

摘要

Responding to a reference from the French Cour de Cassation, the ECJ has clarified the territorial scope of injunctions and the coercive measures used to enforce such injunctions for infringement of a Community trade mark (CTM). It held that the scope of the prohibition against further infringement or threatened infringement of a CTM extends, as a rule, to the entire area of the European Union. It also held that "coercive measures" ordered by a Community trade mark court to ensure compliance with an injunction will extend to all Member States in which the injunction is effective. The courts of those other Member States must ensure that the prohibition is complied with in an equivalent manner, where there is no power to impose coercive measures of the same type. Additionally, the court recognised that there may be limited circumstances in which the prohibition ought not to extend across the whole of the European Union.