In case filed against Portugal by Budweiser (U.S.),
European Court of Human Rights rules that Portuguese courts had accorded fair
treatment to contentions by Budweiser and its Czechoslovakian respondent as to
which party was entitled to copyright protection of name “Budweiser” under
Portuguese law and treaty with Czechoslovakia
On January 11 last, the European Court of Human Rights
(ECHR) ruled against Budweiser (U.S.) (Applicant) on a copyright matter. The
Court held, by 15 votes to two, that, in ruling against Applicant, the
Portuguese courts did not breach Article 1 of Protocol 1 of the European
Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms [312
U.N.T.S. 221, E.T.S. 5, in force Sept. 21, 1970, as amended.] Its key provision
is that “Every natural or legal person is entitled to the enjoyment of his
possessions. No one shall be deprived of his possessions except in the public
interest and subject to the conditions provided for by law and by the general
principles of international law.” The property right at issue here is the
Applicant’s “Budweiser” trade mark.
Applicant had contended that, under international law, trade
mark protection becomes effective as of the date on which its owner filed its
application to register. Therefore, the 1986 copyright treaty between Portugal
and Czechoslovakia, as construed by the Portuguese courts, had deprived it of
that right without compensation, despite the fact that there had been no public‑interest
grounds to justify affording copyright protection to a registered Appellation
of Origin.
The Court’s Grand Chamber disagreed. It noted at the outset
that intellectual property as such does enjoy the protection of Article 1. That
provision also applies to applications for the registration of trade marks,
including the application in the case before it. The Applicant did own a bundle
of proprietary rights recognized by Portuguese law, although they were
revocable under certain conditions.
The question before the Court, therefore, was whether the
decision to apply the provisions of the 1986 treaty to an application for
registration of a mark which Applicant had filed in 1981 constituted an
interference with the Applicant’s right to the peaceful enjoyment of its
possessions.
The Court noted that the Applicant’s main complaint was
about the way in which the Portuguese courts had applied its domestic and
treaty law. The Court recalled that the Convention limits its function to
ruling on whether the decisions by Member State courts were flawed by
arbitrariness or were otherwise clearly unreasonable; it is not to second‑guess
the rulings of Member State courts which are interpreting domestic law.
Absent any arbitrariness or manifest unreasonableness, the
ECHR could not call into question either the findings of the Portuguese Supreme
Court in its judgment of January 23, 2001 or that court’s reading of the
bilateral agreement with Czechoslovakia. In ruling on the conflicting arguments
of two private parties over the right to use the name “Budweiser” as a trade
mark or Appellation of Origin, the Portuguese Supreme Court had ruled against
the Applicant based on the material it considered relevant and sufficient to
resolve the dispute, after hearing representations from the interested parties.
Accordingly, the ECHR concluded that the Supreme Court’s
judgment did not constitute unlawful interference with the Applicant’s right to
the peaceful enjoyment of its possessions and, therefore, there had been no
violation of Article 1 of Protocol No. 1. Two Judges wrote a joint concurring
opinion, and two Judges filed a joint dissenting opinion.
Citation: Anheuser‑Busch Inc. v. Portugal (Grand
Chamber judgment of January 11, 2007; European Court of Human Rights) (summary
by Court Registry on Monday, March 12, 2007 at 22:54:14. (The Court’s judgments
are accessible on its Internet site: http://www.echr.coe.int.)
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