Corona: limiting the jurisdiction of the European Court

Also in the European judiciary, the corona situation will from now on lead to a restriction of jurisdiction. Both the ECJ and the CJEU/CFI will only deal with very urgent cases. Nevertheless, the procedural and legal deadlines must be observed.

Update of 2 April 2020

Due to the constant readjustment of the offices and authorities, we have put a weekly overview in our blog, which takes into account new updates of the offices and authorities. The explanations in this article are still valid, for the most current data for deadline postponement or deadline recovery please refer to our weekly Corona Update – HERE.

ECJ and CJEU

As the European Court of Justice has announced, the Corona situation will also restrict the jurisdiction of the European judiciary from now on. The Court of Justice of the European Union consists of two courts: the Court of Justice (ECJ) and the Court of Justice of the European Union ((CJEU), in some cases Court of First Instance (CFI)). In the field of intellectual property (IP), the two courts mainly rule on European trademarks and designs.

European Court of Justice will only deal with urgent cases

Due to the corona situation, the European Court of Justice is currently announcing that the two courts, the European Court of Justice and the European Court of Justice, will only deal with very urgent cases for the time being.

Explicitly, cases are considered to be urgent:

A) For the ECJ

Urgent proceedings
accelerated procedures
Procedure for interim relief

B) For the CJEU

accelerated procedures
Priority procedures
Procedure for interim relief

In all other cases, all current procedural time limits apply, including the time limits for bringing an action. The Court of Justice expressly points out that the current procedural and action deadlines must be observed, although the two European courts will temporarily not deal with these cases.

Update of 19 March 2020

The European Court of Justice announced the following additions on 19 March 2020:

Until further notice, the time limits set by the Registry will also be extended by one month from 19 March 2020.

All oral hearings scheduled for 3 April 2020 will be postponed to a later date.

However, the legal time limits, including the time limits for bringing an action, will continue to run and must be complied with by the parties, without prejudice to the possibility of relying on Article 45(2) of the Protocol on the Statute of the Court of Justice of the European Union.

Oral hearings postponed for the time being

Oral hearings will be postponed to a later date which is still open. This applies to oral hearings before the ECJ scheduled for 27 March 2020 and to oral hearings before the CJEU scheduled for 3 April 2020.

Oral proceedings before the Boards of Appeal of the EPO are also suspended for the time being due to the corona situation, the EPO had already announced. In contrast to the European Court with the ECJ and CJEU, all oral hearings before the examination and opposition divisions of the EPO are to take place as planned for the time being, in same cases also by video conference we reported about that.

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