Rights holders are entitled to remedies under Title 9 (“Civil aspects of the protection of intellectual property rights”) and Title 10 (“Aspects of procedural law of the protection of intellectual property rights”) of Book XI (“Intellectual Property and Trade Secrets”) CEL as well as under Book XVII (“Specific legal procedures”) CEL. Reference should also be made to the saisie-contrefaçon procedure, provided in Section 1369bis of the Judicial Code, which allows a rights holder to enter, after authorization by the court’s president and without prior warning, the premises of an alleged infringer or an intermediary 3rd party in order to find evidence of and more information regarding infringements.
When implementing the DSM Directive, the Belgian legislator also introduced a new procedure in book XVII CEL, being (ex parte) summary proceedings against large-scale online copyright infringement. These provisions have, however, not yet entered into force: a date of entry into force still has to be set by Royal Decree. As soon as there is a prima facie valid copyright, neighboring right or database right, and the online infringement is prima facie obvious and substantial, after balancing the interests, the president of the Brussels Enterprise court can order any measure that may contribute to the cessation of the infringing acts, not only against the primary infringers but also against intermediaries.
Further, monetary relief can be sought with the damages as a lump sum. In case of a bad-faith infringement, monetary relief may also include a claim of unfair profits made, including accountability.
Finally, a number of supplementary, injunctive sanctions may be sought, such as:
- A recall or definitive removal from the channels of commerce or destruction of the infringing goods and in appropriate cases, of the materials and implements principally used in the creation or manufacture of these goods,
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The right of information, which orders the infringer to share precise information on the origin of the infringing goods or services, the distribution channels and the identity of any 3rd parties involved in the infringement,
- The dissemination of the decision, including the displaying and publishing of the decision in full or in part.
The European principle of exhaustion (similar to the first sale doctrine) applies to copyright protected material, which implies that if a specimen (ie, a particular physical copy) of the copyrighted work has been brought into circulation by means of transfer of ownership for the 1st time by (or with the consent of) the rights holder within the Community, then the further distribution of that same specimen in any other way, with the exception of hiring and letting, shall not be considered as an infringement of the copyright. The exhaustion rule is reserved for the distribution of tangible objects and not for digital works (such as, for example, e-books).
In Belgium, the losing party is in principle condemned to pay the procedural costs, consisting mainly of the procedural cost indemnity (rechtsplegingsvergoeding or indemnité de procédure), the registration fees and the citation fees. The procedural cost indemnity system is set out in Article 1022 of the Judicial Code and based on a scale of lump sums intended to cover (part of) the winning party’s lawyers’ fees. The recoverable amounts vary between minimum and maximum amounts that are determined in function of the financial importance of the claims in the procedure. In an injunctive relief proceeding, in which no monetary relief is claimed and where the claim is thus qualified as a "not monetarily quantifiable" claim, a specific scale applies with (applicable at date of writing this Guide) a standard amount of EUR1,800 which, upon request and depending on the circumstances, can be reduced (to a minimum of EUR112.50) or increased (up to a maximum amount of EUR15,000).