Marola on International Jurisdiction over Infringements of Personality Rights

Giacomo Marola shared a presentation of his monograph based on a PhD thesis he defended at the University of Pavia, titled “International Jurisdiction over Infringements of Personality Rights in EU Private International Law”, published by Wolters Kluwer in December 2025. 

The resolution of conflicts of adjudicatory jurisdiction in civil law disputes arising from infringements of personality rights has long been debated in scholarly literature and remains highly controversial in legal practice.

The reasons for this are manifold.

In the first place, personality rights disputes are particularly sensitive from a cultural and political perspective. Infringements of personality rights are typically committed in connection with the production and dissemination of media content. Such disputes ordinarily involve a conflict between two fundamental rights: the right to reputation or privacy on the part of the alleged victim, and the right to freedom of expression on the part of the alleged tortfeasor. In this context, the jurisdictional analysis is confronted with the delicate task of ensuring an appropriate balance between the litigants’ competing fundamental rights, while at the same time accommodating the diversity of national conceptions as to their proper reconciliation.

Furthermore, infringements of personality rights are characterised by a degree of geographical independence, which sits uneasily with the strictly territorial logic underlying traditional jurisdictional connecting factors. On the one hand, personality rights protect intangible interests belonging to the victim’s personal sphere, notably their moral integrity, and the resulting harm is as a rule immaterial in nature. On the other hand, in today’s information society, such infringements are most often committed by means of the Internet. Due to its attributes of ubiquity and virtuality, the Internet has greatly increased the potential for cross-border violations of personality rights, while simultaneously challenging the application of private international law rules based on geographical connecting factors.

Against this background, the book seeks to contribute to the search for balanced and coherent solutions to conflicts of adjudicatory jurisdiction in personality rights disputes from the perspective of the European Union system of private international law. It thus focuses primarily on the EU law instruments that seek to address such conflicts, namely the Brussels I bis Regulation (Reg. (EU) No 1215/2012) and the General Data Protection Regulation (Reg. (EU) 2016/679). To position the EU solutions in a broader context, the book also considers the approach to adjudicatory jurisdiction adopted in the judicial practice of US courts, which has often informed scholarly discussions on potential reforms of the Brussels I bis jurisdictional framework.

At the outset, Chapter I focuses on the Brussels I bis Regulation, and in particular on the ground of special jurisdiction applicable to tortious disputes under Article 7(2) (the ‘forum delicti’). At a foundational level, a tension exists between the strictly territorial logic underlying the forum delicti – as reflected in the relevant connecting factor, namely the ‘place of the harmful event’ – and the non-territorial nature of personality rights infringements. Further challenges arise in reconciling in practice the two principles or objectives underlying the forum delicti: ensuring a close connection between the dispute and the designated court (procedural proximity), and promoting predictability in the allocation of jurisdiction, as reflected in recitals 15 and 16 of the Brussels I bis Regulation.

Notwithstanding the above-mentioned difficulties, the EU legislator has so far refrained from introducing sector-specific rules of jurisdiction for personality rights infringement cases within the Brussels I regime. It rather left the European Court of Justice (ECJ) with the delicate task of adapting the ground of jurisdiction for tort matters to the specific nature of torts against personality. While attempting to reconcile the conflicting principles and axioms at stake, the solutions developed by the ECJ in interpreting the forum delicti in personality rights disputes, from Shevill (Case C-68/93) to Gtflix (Case C-251/20), have proved somewhat unsatisfactory. Overall, the book argues, the Court’s solutions have fallen short in promoting consistency with the underlying principles of the forum delicti, equality of arms between litigants, and responsiveness to technological reality.

The book carefully evaluates the ECJ’s interpretative solutions in light of the alternative jurisdictional models discussed in the literature. To date, doctrinal proposals for reforming the forum delicti have converged around four main jurisdictional paradigms: jurisdiction where the harmful conduct originated (‘country of origin’), where the harmful online content has circulated most intensively (‘actual access’), where the alleged tortfeasor has actively directed the harmful content (‘targeting’), or in the victim’s home state (‘forum of the victim’).

The current shortcomings of Article 7(2) of the Brussels I bis Regulation do not lend themselves to a single, straightforward solution. Against this background, the book seeks to contribute de lege ferenda to the debate surrounding the forthcoming review of the Regulation by critically engaging with the solutions advanced in the literature and by developing additional proposals for reforming the forum delicti in personality rights infringements cases.

Much of the existing literature has placed considerable emphasis on the ‘targeting’ approach. The book argues, however, that this fact-dependent and open-textured jurisdictional methodology fits uneasily with the Brussels I regime’s long-standing aspiration of promoting legal certainty in the allocation of jurisdiction in civil and commercial matters.

Although the approach to specific jurisdiction over personality rights disputes adopted in the US is by no means the only conceivable ‘targeting’ model, the suitability of ‘targeting’ as a jurisdictional methodology in personality rights disputes is further assessed in the book through an analysis of the US courts’ approach to specific jurisdiction in online defamation cases.

To this effect, Chapter II traces the development of specific jurisdiction in US defamation cases, beginning with the seminal Supreme Court decisions in Keeton v Hustler (465 US 770 (1984)) and Calder v Jones (465 US 783 (1984)), as well as the influential judgment of the US District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania in Zippo Manufacturing Co v Zippo Dot Com Inc (952 F Supp 1119 (WD Pa 1997)). It then examines the recent trend among lower US courts toward abandoning the jurisdictional framework articulated in Zippo in favour of renewed reliance on the approach developed in Calder v Jones. Yet, in the absence of specific guidance from the US Supreme Court on the application of Calder to online defamation, lower courts have applied that precedent unevenly, assigning divergent weight to the various factors that inform the ‘targeting’ inquiry.

Beyond the challenges inherent in the application of Article 7(2) of the Brussels I bis Regulation, the proper regulation of jurisdiction over personality rights disputes within the EU is further hindered by persistent uncertainty concerning the interaction between the Brussels I regime and the jurisdictional rules laid down in the GDPR, as examined in Chapter III of the book.

In particular, despite the EU legislator’s choice to introduce specific jurisdictional rules for private enforcement proceedings in data protection matters under Article 79(2) GDPR, their coordination with the general jurisdictional framework of the Brussels I bis Regulation is addressed only at the level of the GDPR’s preamble. Recital 147 GDPR largely mirrors the ‘disconnection’ clause set out in Article 67 of the Brussels I bis Regulation, without providing any additional guidance on the relationship between the two regimes. As a result, it remains unclear whether Article 79(2) GDPR establishes an exclusive jurisdictional framework or whether data subjects may continue to rely on the grounds of jurisdiction provided by the Brussels I bis Regulation – including the problematic forum delicti – above and beyond the grounds of jurisdiction available under Article 79(2) GDPR.

Finally, the need for a consistent jurisdictional framework for data protection disputes becomes particularly acute in mass-harm situations. To address mass-harm situations caused by the unlawful large-scale processing of personal data, the EU legislator introduced a harmonised model of representative collective redress through Article 80 GDPR. Yet, the availability of collective redress mechanisms under the GDPR underscores the structural limitations of the Brussels I bis Regulation in accommodating mass-harm litigation. As such, in its concluding part, the book examines the jurisdictional challenges arising from collective redress, focusing on the interplay between Article 80 GDPR, Directive (EU) 2020/1828 on representative actions, and the Brussels I bis Regulation, while evaluating potential reforms of the Brussels I bis Regulation to enhance its effectiveness in this context.