Bahrain court declines jurisdiction in $400,000 Arabic film rights case

TDT | Manama

Email : editor@newsofbahrain.com

Four hundred thousand dollars in worldwide rights to an Arabic film are in dispute in a case the High Commercial Court has ruled it cannot hear for lack of jurisdiction, a stance backed by the High Commercial Court of Appeal, according to lawyer AbdulAdheem Hubail.

A Bahraini company had sued an international company and one of its executives, saying they agreed to pay $400,000 in instalments for all external distribution rights to the feature film.

The deal was set out in a contract to purchase all exploitation rights to the film and in two exclusive distribution agreements covering commercial screenings around the globe.

Profit The claimant told the court it had honoured its side of the bargain in full, while the defendants had failed to pay half the sum, $200,000, and had gone on to profit from and sell the film, which is now carried on Netflix.

It argued that, as a Bahraini company with bank statements showing incoming transfers, it was entitled to bring the case before Bahrain’s courts.

The court of first instance said it had examined copies of the two contracts and found they were drawn up on the defendant company’s own letterhead and bore only a signature attributed to that company.

The preamble and the foot of the pages stated that the company’s registered office is in a GCC state.

There was no wording to show that the contracts were concluded in Bahrain, or that performance of the obligations, in whole or in part, took place or was meant to take place there.

On that basis, the court held that the condition in Article 15 of the Civil and Commercial Procedures Law, which turns on the place of performance, did not apply.

The judges noted that the subject of the two agreements was the distribution of commercial rights to the film.

Nothing in their clauses or annexes pointed to any direct or indirect link between performance of the obligations and the territory of Bahrain, or suggested that Bahrain would be used as a venue for distribution, screening, payment or delivery.

From the documents on file, the court said it could not draw any meaningful territorial link that would give the Bahraini courts international jurisdiction.

Evidence

The court added that the claimant had not produced evidence that the defendant company carried out any act in Bahrain tied to the contracts in dispute, or that the contractual relationship was legally and substantially tied to Bahraini territory.

In the court’s view, the dispute was not connected in law to the Kingdom by any of the grounds set out in the statute for international jurisdiction.

It stressed that the fact the claimant is a Bahraini company does not, on its own, give Bahraini courts international jurisdiction.

That requires a link to the territory, through performance of the obligation or through the event that gave rise to the right claimed in the lawsuit. That link was missing here.

Contractual clause

The court further found that the claimant had not put forward any clear contractual clause assigning jurisdiction to the courts of Bahrain.

Instead, clause sixteen of the contract for the purchase of all exploitation rights to the film around the world assigned jurisdiction to the courts of the Arab Republic of Egypt, and clause eleven of the distribution contract for the film worldwide, apart from Egypt, followed the same approach.