Brussels, 17/12/2010 (Agence Europe) - On 16 December, the European Court of First Instance required the European Commission to pay damages of €12,001,000 to the Systran company for violation of Systran's copyright and know-how for the Unix version of Systran's machine translation system.
On 4 October 2003 the Commission published a call for tenders for the maintenance and linguistic enhancement of its machine translation system EC-Systran Unix, with adaptations to the Systran Unix software from 1997 to 2002 carried out by the company Systran Luxembourg S.A., a subsidiary of Systran SA. The services required by the Commission from the successful contractor concerned enhancements, adaptations and additions to linguistic routines, improvements to analysis, transfer and synthesis programmes, and system updates, as covered by the call for tender. Despite Systran's warnings about possible infringement of its intellectual property rights, the Commission argued that the company did not oppose the changes to its software. Systran took the case to the European Court of First Instance, requesting damages following the failure of a conciliation attempt initiated by the Court.
The Court noted that the dispute was not of a contractual nature because past contracts between Systran and the Commission did not cover the publication of Systran's know-how to third parties or work likely to infringe intellectual property rights. It pointed out that Systran can make use of its intellectual property rights over the Systran Unix system to oppose the publication to third parties of the EC-Systran Unix system without its agreement because Systran proved that there was a substantial similarity in the two versions.
The Court of First Instance therefore ruled that by granting the right to amend part of the Systran Unix system that are incorporated in the EC-Systran Unix system without Systran's prior approval, the Commission acted unlawfully by infringing copyright and divulging Systran's know-how, giving rise to non-contractual liability on the part of the European Union.
The damages and interest of €12,001,000 that the Commission must pay Systran cover €7 million which would have been payable between 2004 and 2010 if the Commission had requested permission to use Systran's intellectual property rights in order to carry out the work specified in the call for tender; - €5 million as compensation for the effect which the Commission's conduct might have had on Systran's turnover in the years 2004 to 2010, and more widely on the development of that company; and €1,000 as compensation for non-material damage. The Court of First Instance says that the Commission must ensure that Systran's rights in the Systran Unix version are taken into account as concerns the work relating to the EC-Systran Unix version. If they are not, then Systran would be entitled to take a new case to the Court of First Instance seeking damages in respect of the further damage it might suffer. (F.G./transl.fl)