European Union – Intellectual property rights. The Court of Justice of the European Union gave a preliminary ruling, deciding that art 8(3)(e) of Directive (EC) 2004/48 had to be interpreted as precluding a national provision, such as that at issue in the main proceedings, which allowed, in an unlimited and unconditional manner, a banking institution to invoke banking secrecy in order to refuse to provide, pursuant to art 8(1)(c) of that directive, information concerning the name and address of an account holder.