The whirlwind that was 2020 brought about an abundance of significant judgments from the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in the area of intellectual property, technology and data protection. As the Court hands down more judgments, it becomes particularly important to track these rulings, seeing as the unified EU legal system increasingly begins to resemble a common law precedent-based model. While legislation in the form of international treaties and EU regulations remains the main source of law within the EU, it is greatly supplemented by the case law flowing from the CJEU.

This is why we have reviewed the CJEU decisions, handpicked the top 10 IP&T cases of 2020 and ranked them by relevance and impact on law and, above all, on business. We considered the gravity of the implications of various CJEU judgments and decided to include the ten we believe will influence both legal professionals and the business the most, with Schrems II on the top of our list. It is undeniably the most important judgment having huge impact on data transfer to, inter alia, American tech giants such as Facebook and Google.

Our note comprises bite-size case digests containing everything there is to know from a detailed summary of the facts, to the judgment and legal reasoning behind it, as well as expert commentaries from the Dentons Warsaw IP&T team experts. We also provide an alert on what to watch out for in IP law in 2021 to always stay ahead of the legal curve.