Brussels, 16/11/2012 (Agence Europe) - On 16 November, Advocate General Cruz Villalón proposed to the Court of Justice of the EU (conclusions in case C-103/11 P Commission/Systran) that it cancel the ruling of the General Court of 2010 (case T-19/07, EUROPE 10327 and 10280) sentencing the European Commission to pay flat-rate compensation of 12 million euros to the French company Systran (machine translation software) for infringement of its intellectual property rights. The Court believes that the General Court should have declined competence and that the dispute between the Commission and the company should have been examined as a priority and, if necessary, ruled upon by the competent national jurisdictions appointed by the successive contracts concluded between the Systran and the Commission.
The General Court ruled against the Commission for having divulged Systran's expertise without its agreement, by granting the Belgian company Gosselies SA, in a call for tenders lodged in 2003, the maintenance and linguistic reinforcement of its machine translation system EC-Systran Unix, derived from the Systran Unix software and developed by a subsidiary of the Systran group. In its ruling, it noted: - that the dispute was not of a contractual nature, as the contracts concluded before the call for tenders between Systran and the Commission did not cover the issue of divulging Systran's expertise to third parties or work likely to infringe its intellectual property rights; - that Systran could exercise its intellectual property rights on the Systran Unix version to oppose the divulgation to third parties, without its agreement, of the derived version EC-Systran Unix, as Systran had demonstrated that there was a substantial similarity between the two versions. The Commission called for this ruling to be cancelled, arguing: - that the dispute between it and Systran did indeed fall under contractual liability, as shown by the contracts concluded with Systran between 1975 and 2002 and other documents; - that the General Court was wrong in its assessment of the legal nature of the dispute and had disregarded its own rules of competence.
The Advocate General went along with the institution on this point. He believes that the General Court should have declined competence and called on the parties first of all to approach the national competent courts, which should have examined the liabilities of the parties in light of a detailed and thorough examination of the nature, objective and purpose of the various contracts in question, in line with the laws applicable to them. If, nonetheless, the Court was to conclude that the General Court was indeed competent, Mr Cruz Villalón calls upon it to receive various other objections raised by the Commission (incorrect application of the directive on copyright and Systran's right to compensation) and to refer the matter to the General Court. (FG/transl.fl)