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Louboutin et Christian Louboutin
Propriété intellectuelle et industrielle
Une marque consistant en une couleur appliquée sur la semelle d’une chaussure ne relève pas de l’interdiction d’enregistrement des formes

Des années trente à la chute de l’Union soviétique, Nikolaï Starostin et ses frères ont profondément marqué le football russe. Avec un incident de parcours notable : leur condamnation au goulag.

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Confirmation de la mise en accusation, pour le meurtre d’une Française, d’un Anglais résidant en Irlande, intervenant après que les autorités de cet État ont, à deux reprises, refusé d’exécuter un mandat d’arrêt européen et du rejet de l’application du principe non bis in idem, la décision du procureur général irlandais de renoncer aux poursuites n’étant pas définitive.

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Riga Graduate School of Law (RGSL) will be hosting the Erasmus+ Jean Monnet conference titled “Consumer Protection and Fundamental Rights” on 18-19 June.

The idea of the RGSL Jean Monnet Project is to conduct a multidisciplinary exploration of Fundamental Rights including their philosophical, geographic, technological, political, cultural, societal and economic dimensions. The project is designed for researchers, public administrators, professional groups and civil society representatives. There are four conferences envisaged with the first conference focusing on consumer protection.

The conference programme is available here.

For more info on the project click here.

Pourvoi c/ Cour d'appel de Toulouse - 2e chambre, 04 septembre 2017

Pourvoi c/ Chambre de l'instruction de la cour d'appel de Paris - 4e section, 15 septembre 2017

In common law Canada there is a clear separation between the question of a court having jurisdiction (jurisdiction simpliciter) and the question of a court choosing whether to exercise or stay its jurisdiction.  One issue discussed in the Supreme Court of Canada’s recent decision in Haaretz.com v Goldhar (available here) is the extent of that separation.  Does this separation mean that a particular fact cannot be used in both the analysis of jurisdiction and of forum non conveniens?  On its face that seems wrong.  A fact could play a role in two separate analyses, being relevant to each in different ways.

Justice Cote, with whom Justices Brown and Rowe agreed, held that “applicable law, as determined by the lex loci delicti principle, should be accorded little weight in the forum non conveniens analysis in cases where jurisdiction is established on the basis of the situs of the tort” (para 90).  She indicated that this conclusion was mandated by the separation of jurisdiction and staying proceedings, which extends to each being “based on different factors”.  So if the place of the tort has been used as the basis for assuming jurisdiction, the same factor (the place of the tort) should not play a role in analyzing the most appropriate forum when considering a stay.  And since the applicable law is one of the factors considered in that analysis, if the applicable law is to be identified based on the connecting factor of the place of the tort, which is the rule in common law Canada, then the applicable law as a factor “should be accorded little weight”.

In separate concurring reasons, Justice Karakatsanis agreed that the applicable law “holds little weight here, where jurisdiction and applicable law are both established on the basis of where the tort was committed” (para 100).  In contrast, the three dissenting judges rejected this reason for reducing the weight of the applicable law (para 208).  The two other judges did not address this issue, so the tally was 4-3 for Justice Cote’s view.

As Vaughan Black has pointed out in discussions about the decision, the majority approach, taken to its logical conclusion, would mean that if jurisdiction is based on the defendant’s residence in the forum then the defendant’s residence is not a relevant factor in assessing which forum is more appropriate.  That contradicts a great many decisions on forum non conveniens.  Indeed, the court did not offer any supporting authorities in which the “double counting” of a fact was said to be inappropriate.

The majority approach has taken analytical separation too far.  There is no good reason for excluding or under-weighing a fact relevant to the forum non conveniens analysis simply because that same fact was relevant at the jurisdiction stage.  Admittedly the court in Club Resorts narrowed the range of facts that are relevant to jurisdiction in part to reduce overlap between the two questions.  But that narrowing was of jurisdiction.  Forum non conveniens remains a broad doctrine that should be based on a wide, open-end range of factors.  The applicable law, however identified, has to be one of them.

Cour d'appel de Versailles, 31 mai 2018

Tribunal de grande instance d'Aix-en-Provence, 16 mai 2018

Pourvoi c/ Cour d'appel de Bourges, 2e chambre, 7 décembre 2017