Giving judgment today in Case C-235/09 DHL Express France SAS v Chronopost SA the Court of Justice of the European Union (ECJ) clarified that, in general, when a Community Trade Mark Court orders a defendant to stop infringing a Community trade mark, the scope of that order will be EU-wide.  Exceptions are where the trade mark owner asks for more restricted injunctive relief and where the acts of infringement or threatened infringement are limited to a single Member State or to part of the territory of the European Union.

In the same case the ECJ ruled that, where a court orders that the defendant must make recurring payments for failure to comply with an order, and the trade mark owner seeks enforcement of that order in the court of another EU member state which has no such facility to grant an order of recurring payment, it is incumbent on the court in that country to ensure that the coercive measure is enforced in an equivalent manner.

A helpful press release summarising the effect of the decision has been issued by the Curia here.