European Court of Justice, Productores de Música de España (Promusicae) v Telefónica de España SAU, Case C-275/06, July 16, 2009

Promusicae sought an order from a commercial court in Spain to force Telefónica, a Spanish ISP, to divulge identities corresponding to IP addresses that Promusicae had collected in its own investigations of illegal file sharing. The Spanish court granted Promusicae’s request. Telefónica appealed to the ECJ in regards the interpretations of the Community Law, Articles 15(2) and 18 of Directive 2000/31, Article 8(1) and (2) of Directive 2001/29, Article 8 of Directive 2004/48 and Articles 17(2) and 47 of the Charter on the limits of ISPs’ responsibilities to assist in criminal investigation versus civil proceedings. Balancing ISP customers’ privacy with content industry’s ability to protect its intellectual property, theECJ held that European law alone does not require ISPs to disclose their subscribers’ identities to trade organizations for the purpose of civil litigation against the subscribers in order to ensure effective protection of copyright. See also Global FoE