News Supreme Court rulings November 2020

1. Victims of sexual violence and state compensation for damages

The Supreme Court, in ruling no. 26757 of Nov. 24, 2020 ruled that the Italian state must compensate victims of intentional violent crimes (including sexual violence under Article 609-bis of the Criminal Code) if the victim fails to obtain compensation from the perpetrator.

Such compensation should not be purely symbolic but, if determined as a lump sum, should take into account the peculiarities of the crime and its severity.

The victim should be awarded damages for the Italian state’s late transposition of Art. 12(2) of Directive 2004/80/EC, which required member states to adopt a system of compensation for victims of violent crimes and which our country only implemented in 2017.

2. Construction offenses and maintenance of unauthorized buildings

The Supreme Court, Third Criminal Section, in ruling no. 27993/2020 stated that all interventions made on a construction that has been illegally built constitute a new crime because they result in a resumption of the original criminal activity. This is also the case with routine maintenance work.

On this point, a constant jurisprudential orientation is recalled (see Cass. no. 48026/2019, Cass. no. 38495/2016), according to which,“on the subject of construction crimes, any intervention carried out on a construction that has been built illegally, even if the abuse has not been repressed, constitutes a resumption of the original criminal activity, which integrates a new crime, even if it consists of ordinary maintenance work, because even this category of construction work presupposes that the building on which the intervention is carried out was built legitimately.”

3. Punishable the conscious buyer of counterfeit goods

The Supreme Court of Cassation, Fifth Criminal Section, in ruling no. 31836/2020, held that the presence of knowledge on the part of the buyer of the non-authenticity of the trademark constitutes the crime of trade in counterfeit goods.

According to the prevailing legal guideline, the crime of trading in counterfeit products is integrated by those who offer for sale car accessories and spare parts on which the trademark of the company that produces the originals is reproduced.

The Court has previously ruled that the putting on the market of spare parts of a complex product covered by a registered trademark cannot be prohibited, but infringement of the trademark affixed by the trademark owner to the original components can be inhibited. In order for the crime to be established, therefore, it is not necessary to have a situation that is likely to mislead the customer as to the genuineness of the product, but, in the presence of counterfeiting, the crime can be established even if the buyer has been made aware by the seller of the non-authenticity of the trademark.