The Justiciability of Foreign Copyright Claims

Extract

When can English defendants be sued in England for the infringement of a foreign copyright? They were once immune, for two distinct reasons. English law formerly governed liability even for foreign torts, the effect of the rule in Phillips v. Eyre (1870) L.R. 6 Q.B. 1. Such claims were therefore pointless because English copyright protection extends only to English infringements; English law, although in principle applicable, could not be applied. Less convincingly, foreign intellectual property rights, like rights in foreign land, were generally regarded as non-justiciable under the rule in British South Africa Co. v. Cia. de Moçambique [1893] A.C. 602.