By Patrick Van Eecke, Alexis Fierens and Ivanka Zdravkova (DLA Piper – Brussels)

By the judgment rendered on 22 October 2013 in the Belgian version of the long-lasting The Pirate Bay saga, the Belgian Court of Cassation (Belgium’s Supreme Court) confirmed the lawfulness of a far-reaching injunction order against all national Internet service providers. According to this judgment, the examining magistrate (juge d’instruction) is entitled to order, in a single injunction, all national Internet service providers to block access to IP rights-infringing content which is hosted by a server, linked to a specific main domain name, and such by employing all possible technical means at their disposal or at least by blocking all domain names that refer to a specified main domain name (“thepiratebay.org“).

According to the Court of Cassation, such a judicial order does not impose a general obligation of monitoring upon the Internet service providers and, therefore, does not constitute a violation of Article 21(1) of the Belgian Act of 11 March 2003 on certain legal aspects of information society services (the “E-Commerce Act”) implementing Article 15(1) of the EC Directive 2000/31/EC of the European Parliament and the Council of 8 June 2000 on certain legal aspects of information society services, in particular electronic commerce, in the Internal Market (the “E-Commerce Directive”).Continue Reading Pirate Bay case: Belgian Supreme Court confirms lawfulness of generic IP blocking injunctions