Pearce v. Ove Arup Partnership Ltd

The resolution of transnational disputes relating to intellectual property law is a subject which continues to exercise the minds of academics and practitioners alike. In Pearce v. Ove Arup Partnership Ltd,1 the Court of Appeal had to consider the jurisdiction of an English court under the Brussels Convention on Jurisdiction and the Enforcement of Judgments in Civil and Commercial Matters to determine whether a foreign copyright had been infringed overseas. In ruling that such jurisdiction did exist in principle, the Court of Appeal followed an ostensibly similar, yet subtly different, chain of reasoning to Lloyd, J., at first instance. In the course of the judgment, complex issues as to the relationship between rules of jurisdiction, justiciability and choice of law were addressed.