Microsoft Ireland Operations Limited – Court Ruling (Netherlands, 2021)

The claimant requested Microsoft Ireland to remove a number of URLs (links) from a list of search engine results following a search by the claimant's name in Microsoft's search engine, Bing. The claimant based his request on Articles 17(1)(a) and (c) GDPR and Articles 10 and 21 GDPR. The Court first examined its competence to rule on the request. The request is of an international nature as the applicant is domiciled in the UK and Microsoft is domiciled in Ireland. It noted that the dispute falls within the scope of the Brussels I bis Regulation in substantive, formal and temporal terms. Recital 147 GDPR states that the general rules of jurisdiction of the Brussels I bis Regulation should not prejudice the application of the specific rules of jurisdiction contained in the GDPR. This means that in a situation where both the Brussels I bis Regulation and the AVG are applicable, the Brussels I bis Regulation cannot take away the competence designated by the GDPR. The Court referred to the case law of the CJEU (see [https://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf?text=&docid=111742&pageIndex=0&doclang=en&mode=req&dir=&occ=first&part=1&cid=2540581 CJEU 25 November 2011, ECLI:EU:C:2011:685, eDate Advertising GMBH/Martinez]), from which it follows that Article 7(2) Brussels I bis Regulation, in the event of an alleged infringement of personal rights by content placed on the internet, must be interpreted as meaning that the victim may also lodge the claim with the court where he has his 'centre of interests'. The CJEU defines the centre of interests as follows: "That place is usually the victim's habitual residence, but it may also be a Member State in which the victim does not habitually reside, provided that other evidence, such as the pursuit of a professional activity, may show that there is a particularly close connection with that State." Whilst the claimant considered that he has the centre of interests in the Netherlands since he conducts his professional ac