Do EUPL-1.2 license violations have to be disputed in an EU court?

Question

Section 14 of the EUPL-1.2 states:

14. Jurisdiction

Without prejudice to specific agreement between parties,

— any litigation resulting from the interpretation of this License, arising between the European Union institutions, bodies, offices or agencies, as a Licensor, and any Licensee, will be subject to the jurisdiction of the Court of Justice of the European Union, as laid down in article 272 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union,

— any litigation arising between other parties and resulting from the interpretation of this License, will be subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the competent court where the Licensor resides or conducts its primary business.

Which seems well and dandy, "the competent court" being the court of wherever it is one resides. But section 15 follows this up with:

15. Applicable Law

Without prejudice to specific agreement between parties,

— this Licence shall be governed by the law of the European Union Member State where the Licensor has his seat, resides or has his registered office,

— this licence shall be governed by Belgian law if the Licensor has no seat, residence or registered office inside a European Union Member State.

Which to me suggests if the licensor is outside of the EU "the competent court" has to interpret the license text from within the context of Belgian law, which seems like a lot to ask of a court in say, the U.S... Would the licensor have to get a resident or register an office in Belgium to bring forth a copyright claim?

Answer 1

Most free software licences don't contain choice-of-law clauses; this question examines the whole issue in more detail, and sheds some interesting light on why the FSF, in particular, don't think it's a good idea. So you're not alone in thinking that language in the EUPL could cause problems for random licensors.

The EUPL was originally drafted for software written by EU public bodies as part of the IDABC (Interoperable Delivery of European eGovernment Services to public Administrations, Businesses and Citizens) program, and has since been taken up by a number of EU public bodies for free software they release in general. For them, the choice-of-law clause doesn't pose a problem.

The licence is not really intended for random developers to use, particularly those that aren't in the EU. To address the problem of downstream developers who want to release derivative works, the EUPL allows (in "Article" 5) derivative works to be relicensed under GPL, or nearly any other major copyleft licence, as listed in the Appendix.

So I think you're right that it would make life difficult for a developer in, say, Brazil, to release software under this licence, but I also think there's no good reason why (s)he should have to. If, despite this, (s)he chooses to, then we might reasonably conclude that (s)he's willing to endure the potential complications.