0.6 Enforcement  (Page 6/7)

Cross-border infringement, extraterritoriality, conflict of laws and jurisdictional limitations

Despite attempts to create some uniformity in international copyright laws, domestic legal procedures, burdens of proof, and the availability and amount of damages vary considerably across countries. Because of these differences, the plaintiff’s choice of which country and court to bring her suit in becomes important. However, whether a particular forum is available is likely to be limited by the substantive law of copyright and the doctrines of extraterritoriality, choice of law, and conflict of laws.

For instance, a copyright holder cannot usually sue in one country for acts of copyright infringement that occurred in a different country. This is because, with a few exceptions, the doctrine of extraterritoriality means that a country's laws only apply within the geographic borders of that country. Applying this doctrine, courts in the United States have almost uniformly rejected attempts to apply U.S. copyright law to conduct outside of the United States. Most other countries have taken the same position.

The doctrine of extraterritoriality has been complicated, however, by digital technologies and the rise of the Internet. With physical goods, it is usually easy to identify "where" an act of copyright infringement occurred. However, infringement in the digital environment may involve several steps that occur in different countries governed by different copyright regimes. This muddles the question of where an actual infringement took place.

In the United States, courts confronted with such problems have generally held that US laws apply only when the defendant has engaged in some concrete act on U.S. soil. But most countries have yet to be confronted with cases of this sort. How the courts in those countries will respond remains uncertain.

If a particular infringement is alleged to have occurred at least in part in more than one country, a court will engage in a “conflict of laws” analysis to determine which country’s law will govern the infringement action. Because the same act of infringement may occur in several different countries, it is possible that courts in different countries might apply different countries' laws to the same action. Sometimes, a court will rule that the applicable law is the law of the country in which the infringement occurred. As such, that law will govern all elements of the action without regard to the nationality of the author, the country of origin of the copyrighted work, or the place of first publication of the copyrighted work. However, this view has been criticized by some commentators because its application would result in the application of different laws every time the work crosses a national border.

An alternative approach is to apply different laws to the issues of originality, ownership, and infringement -- the different elements of the infringement action. Under this view, a U.S. court would have to apply U.S. law to resolve issues of originality if the work is first published in the U.S. The law applicable to ownership is likely to be the law of the country that has the most significant relationship to the copyrighted work and to the parties involved. Finally, under the general principle of  lex loci delicti   (the place of wrong), the law applicable to the actual infringement is likely to be that of the country in which the actual infringement occurred.