EU calls for comprehensive revamp of intellectual property rights

The European Commission has set out its blueprint for a comprehensive revamp of the legal framework around intellectual property, promising a Europe-wide system for licensing digital content, improvements to the trademarks office and a crack-down on piracy and counterfeiting.

The blueprint, unveiled yesterday by Michel Barnier, Internal Market Commissioner, also commits to deliver a single EU patent and a court to deal with patent disputes.“IP is the key to innovation – and the word property is the key for an inventor to have the incentive and get the funding for innovation,” Barnier said. The trick is to set out a framework of intellectual property rights that strikes the correct balance between protecting IP and ensuring dissemination, he added.

At the centre of the blueprint is a proposal to set up a single European system for the collective management of rights to digital content. Although copyright per se is more or less harmonised across Europe, licensing of content still operates on a national level. Barnier said the unified system will allow companies to hand out multi-territory licenses, streamlining copyright licensing and the distribution of revenue.

It will also be made easier to license rights to “orphan works” where the copyright owner is not known, with the Commission tabling a legislative proposal that will enable the digitisation and online access to works like books and newspaper or magazine articles that are still protected by copyright, but where the right holders are not known or cannot be located to obtain permissions. It is also seeking agreement with libraries, publishers, authors and collecting societies, to work on digitising and making available books that are out of copyright.

“Ensuring the right level of protection of intellectual property rights in the single market is essential for Europe’s economy. Progress depends on new ideas and new knowledge,” Barnier said. “There will be no investment in innovation if rights are not protected. On the other hand, consumers and users need to have access.”

While trade mark registration in the EU has been harmonised in Member States for almost 20 years and the Community trade mark was established 15 years ago, there is an increasing demand for more streamlined, effective and consistent registration systems. Barnier said proposals to modernise the trade mark system both at EU and national levels and adapt it to the Internet era, will be announced later in the year.

The next moves on the single patent and patent court will be to hold discussions on new proposals for the patent court with ministers at the Competitiveness Council meeting next month. The new proposals are needed because the European Court of Justice ruled earlier this year that the existing plans would not be legal.

At the same time Barnier said the Commission will press on with introducing the single patent under the enhanced cooperation procedure, which allows the work to go ahead despite the fact that Spain and Italy do not agree with the plan. Barnier said he hopes the two countries will be persuaded to join in, adding, “I hope we will be able to come up with a single patent during my time as commissioner.”