Belgian Electronic Sorting Technology NV v Bert Peelaers and Visys NV.
Date: 2013-07-11
28. In that regard, it should be noted that it is for the referring court alone to determine the subject-matter of the questions it intends to refer to the Court. It is solely for the national courts before which actions are brought, and which must bear the responsibility for the subsequent judicial decision, to determine, in the light of the special features of each case, both the need for a preliminary ruling in order to enable them to deliver judgment and the relevance of the questions which they submit to the Court (see Case C‑159/97 Castelletti [1999] ECR I-1597, paragraph 14; Case C‑154/05 Kersbergen-Lap and Dams-Schipper  [2006] ECR I‑6249, paragraph 21; and Case C‑321/03 Dyson  [2007] ECR I‑687, paragraph 23).
29. Admittedly, the Court has repeatedly held that, even if, formally, a national court limits its reference to the interpretation of certain provisions of European Union law, the Court is not thereby precluded from providing the national court with all those elements of interpretation of that law which may be of use deciding the case before it, whether or not that court has specifically referred to them in the wording of its question (see, inter alia, Dyson , paragraph 24; Case C-392/05 Alevizos  [2007] ECR I‑3505, paragraph 64; and Case C‑275/06 Promusicae  [2008] ECR I-271, paragraph 42).
35. The Court has previously observed that that particularly broad definition means that the forms which advertising may take are very varied (see, to that effect, Case C-112/99 Toshiba Europe  [2001] ECR I-7945, paragraph 28) and is not therefore limited to traditional forms of advertising.
37. The purpose of those conditions, as the Court held with regard to Directive 84/450 and as is apparent from recitals 8, 9 and 15 in the preamble to Directive 2006/114, is to achieve a balance between the different interests which may be affected by allowing comparative advertising, by allowing competitors to highlight objectively the merits of the various comparable products in order to stimulate competition to the consumer’s advantage while, at the same time, prohibiting practices which may distort competition, be detrimental to competitors and have an adverse effect on consumer choice (see, to that effect, Case C‑487/07 L’Oréal and Others  [2009] ECR I-5185, paragraph 68, and Case C‑159/09 Lidl [2010] ECR I-11761, paragraph 20).
56. In the majority of cases, an internet user entering the name of a company’s product or that company’s name as a search term is looking for information or offers on that specific product or that company and its range of products. Accordingly, when links to sites offering the goods of a competitor of that company are displayed, in the list of natural results, the internet user may perceive those links as offering an alternative to the goods of that company or think that they lead to sites offering its goods (see, by analogy, Joined Cases C‑236/08 to C-238/08 Google France and Google  [2010] ECR I-2417, paragraph 68). This is particularly the case when the links to the website of that company’s competitor are among the first search results, close to those of that company, or when the competitor uses a domain name that refers to the trade name of that company or the name of one of its products.