[Hague-jur-commercial-law] Recog & Enforcement of judgments in IP matters within EU

[Manon Ress]

The present Brussels Regulation, as I understand it, is confined to
mutual recognition within the EC.  There would be nothing to stop the EC
extending recognition to third countries, either unilaterally or by
bilateral treaty, but it would be very tedious and probably too
politically contentious to be worthwhile except in special cases.

It is one of the purposes of the proposed Hague conventioon on
jurisdiction and recognition to extend mutual recognition beyond closed
groups like the EU.  However, realistically, you worry that by signing a
global treaty you will commit yourself to recognize judgments from
countries with incompetent, biased, or dishonest courts.  So nobody
signs.

The attraction of the bilateral approach is that you can assess the
quality of each other country's courts before accepting them.  The
disadvantage is that you may have to tell another country, plainly and
sometimes publicly, that you think its courts are no good.

One alternative is the current US system, where most of the time the
courts are not obliged to recognize internationally foreign judgments
but have a discretion to do so, and are so used to recognizing
interstate foreign judgments that they are ready to recognize
internationally foreign judgments using that discretion.  However, the
risk there is that a strong-willed judge in a politically contentious
case could cause an awkward situation.

On balance I favor the bilateral approach, because it places the
contentious exercise of international relations in the hands of the
diplomats and politicians (whose job it is), not the judges, and because
it removes that exercise from being affected by the facts of a
particular case.

Henry N. Blanco White
(U.S. and European Patent Attorney)
E-mail: Henry.Blancowhite@dbr.com


************************************************
Manon Anne Ress
manon.ress@cptech.org,
www.cptech.org

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