Evidence
Section 2 of the Directive deals with the evidence. Article 6 gives the power to the interested party to apply for evidence regarding an infringement that lies in the hands of the other party to be presented. The only requirement is for that party to present “reasonably available evidence sufficient to support its claim” to courts. In case of an infringement on a commercial scale, Member States must also take steps to ensure that “banking, financial or commercial documents” of the opposing party are presented. In both cases confidential information shall be protected.
Measures for preserving evidence are available even before the proceedings commence. Article 7 provides that such measures may be granted under the same conditions as under Article 6 and include provisional measures such as physical seizure not only of the infringing goods (such as hard drives) but also materials used in the production and distribution.
Article 6 provides that such measures may be taken without the other party having been heard, in particular where any delay is likely to cause irreparable harm to the rightholder or where there is a demonstrable risk of evidence being destroyed. These are interlocutory, ex parte and in personam orders known in the English and Irish jurisdictions as Anton Piller orders. They are not used outside the UK and Ireland.
Read more about this topic: Enforcement Directive
Famous quotes containing the word evidence:
“Strict rules of evidence would destroy psychoanalysis and literary criticism.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“Yet in spite of all they sang in praise of their “Eliza’s reign,” we have evidence that poets may be born and sing in our day, in the presidency of James K. Polk.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“However backwards the world has been in former ages in the discovery of such points as GOD never meant us to know,—we have been more successful in our own days:Mthousands can trace out now the impressions of this divine intercourse in themselves, from the first moment they received it, and with such distinct intelligence of its progress and workings, as to require no evidence of its truth.”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)