Brussels, 06/02/2006 (Agence Europe) - The public hearing on intellectual property organised on 31 January at the European Parliament allowed stock to the taken of copyright protection, the issues at stake concerning Community legislation (mainly in penal matters) and the problem of the Community patent.
Digital technology, and the Internet in particular, has overthrown life styles and made certain areas of society such as intellectual property rights ever more complex. Today, millions of consumers distribute and diffuse on-line material that was once protected by copyright. This was pointed out by Christian Alberdingk Thijm, lawyer and Master of Law for Intellectual Property, who noted the behaviour of European legislators in the face of this change: “This should have made law simpler, but the Commission has done the contrary and complicated law by creating new exclusive rights”, he said. In his view, the Commission should focus more on setting up a “one stop shop” system and foreseeing a roadmap allowing a single intellectual property legislation to be set in place.
On the subject of invention protection, the European Union has “done its work well”, Wubbo de Boer, President of the Office for the Harmonisation of the Internal Market (OHIM) in Alicante, said. Two systems have been in place for 12 and 3 years, for marks and designs respectively. These two systems may coexist with national systems that are still valid, may be obtained through a simple administrative procedure and are valid throughout EU territory. Although many requests for patents are registered each year - and not only by large companies, Mr de Boer says, “the economy has reacted well to the existence of Community protection”. In his view, a new legislation is not necessary for improvements to be possible in terms of speed and information technology. Klaus-Dieter Langfinger from UNICE recognises, on the other hand, that European SMEs encounter many more problems (especially costs) than large companies when it comes to submitting a request for patents. Although the number of requests has considerably increased in Europe, the EU is still lagging a long way behind the United States and Japan as “it has not attached the same importance to intellectual property” as they have done.
Speaking on behalf of consumers, Jim Murray , Director of the BEUC (European Consumers' Organisation), tackled the problem of sanctions linked to piracy on the internet. “The trend is to criminalise all daily practices” and to weaken protection of private life, he deplores. “This goes much too far. It is out of proportion. (…) Consumers must continue to benefit from their rights”, he added, saying: “We should like a more balanced policy when it comes to intellectual property in order to prevent abuse and to tell users what they can do, instead of what they cannot do”. Considering that the need for European harmonisation of criminal sanctions (as advocated by the Commission) should first of all be justified, Managing Director of the Max Planck Institute for IP and Professor of Law Reto M. Hilty warned that excessive use of criminal law must be avoided. On a different note, Nick Ashton-Hart of the International Music Managers Forum stresses that: “commercial use of intellectual property without remuneration for the creator must be sanctioned”. “Why not set up a de minimis prison sentence that would be the same everywhere?”
On the subject of the Community patent - this “marvellous solution” which has caused so much ink to flow but which remains at its point of departure nine years after the Commission's Green Paper, as Julio Añonveros Trias de Bes, Chair Jean Monnet at ESADE Barcelona, puts it, “must be accessible at every level, including for SMEs and small inventors”. Today, “national systems work well and the European patent has shown its worth, but the Community patent is, despite it all, needed and may coexist with these systems”. Stressing that the problems that remain in this dossier are translation costs and the jurisdictional system for dealing with litigation, the professor asks: “Is there a real political will to get this project through?” He believes that, if this were the case, then the “dossier would have been settled and done with a long time ago”. The Principal Director for International Legal Affairs and Patent Law of the European Patent Office (EPO), Wim Van der Eijk notes that the “current European system is incomplete”. The Community patent should not replace it but “provide an additional option for the protection of inventions”. The EPO continues to support the concept of Community patent in the long-term perspective but, in order to improve the traditional system more rapidly, it attempts to find initiatives, such as the 2001 London Agreement on translation costs (that France has still not ratified: EUROPE 9078) or the efforts to create a single legal body to handle litigation. Such solutions would, Mr Van der Eijk believes, “contribute to attaining the Lisbon goals”.