Professional Documents
Culture Documents
1. Basic Principles
1.1. Rationale for protection
Intellectual Property (IP) has been described as the world´s sixth largest asset class, and
a critical source of innovation financing. There are different theories that justify its
existence:
Their exclusive nature renders IP rights in contradiction with some of the fundamental
objectives of Art. 101 and 102 TFEU:
1.2.1. Domestic
IP rights are territorial in nature, i.e., they are conferred under national laws, their effects
are limited to the territory of the state that confers them, and they are enforceable by a
court with jurisdiction over the laws of that state.
1.2.2. International
At the international level, States have developed various strategies to address the
problems created by the domestic territoriality of IP. The first step taken in the 19th
century was the signing of Bilateral Agreements concerning the mutual recognition of
domestic IP law. However, this was insufficient, so in the 1880s two major conventions
were adopted to establish general rules of legal protection within a wider community:
They are still the foundational instruments of IP worldwide, and are the basis of European
IP laws. The two most important principles are:
• National treatment: each State is obliged to grant the nationals of another State
the same treatment that it grants to its own nationals under its national law.
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• WIPO:
o Madrid Agreement 1891;<https://wipolex.wipo.int/en/text/283529>
o Rome Convention 196;1<https://wipolex.wipo.int/en/text/289795>
o Trademarks Law Treaty 1994; <https://wipolex.wipo.int/en/text/294357
o Copyright Treaty 1996; <https://wipolex.wipo.int/en/text/295166>
o Performance and Phonograms Treaty 1996; <https://eur-
lex.europa.eu/legal-
content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:22000A0411(02)>
o Patent Law Treaty 2000. <https://wipolex.wipo.int/en/text/288773>
1.2.3. European
The territoriality of national IP rights created a problem for the objectives of the European
Communities, as they included the right to restrict the free movement of IP protected
goods and services between Member States.
An important notion is that of the doctrine of exhaustion. This doctrine confirms that the
free movement rules prevent the use of national IP rights to prohibit or restrict the
movement from ECC Member State A to B of any product that has been put into
circulation with the consent of the IP right holder, regardless of whether the product is
protected by IP under the laws of the Member State. The only situations in which the
doctrine would not apply would be where the articles in question were first placed on the
market outside the Community or without the consent of the IP right holder.
2. Patents
The European Patent Convention (EPC)
<https://documents.epo.org/projects/babylon/eponet.nsf/0/53A0FE62C259803BC12
586A90058BCAD/$File/EPC_17th_edition_2020_en.pdf>
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Patents are contracts between the State and the inventor or other patent applicants. The
inventor discloses and makes his invention available to the public in exchange for the
public´s agreement not to perform it for a limited period of time without his authorisation.
After that period, the public can freely use the invention.
2.2. Requirements
According to the European Patent Convention (EPC), European patents shall be granted
for any inventions, in all fields of technology, provided that they are new, involve an
inventive step and are susceptible of industrial application.
• Novelty: An invention is new as long as it is not anticipated by the state of the art.
The test applied by patent offices to determine the novelty of an invention is
whether the prior art discloses the invention sufficiently to enable a skilled person
to perform it. The state of the art comprises everything that has been made
available to the public anywhere in the world, by any means, before the date of
the patent application filing; as well as all that is contained in any patent
application published on or after that date, but filed before it. If the applicant filed
a patent application claiming the same invention in a State member of the Paris
Convention 12 months or less before the European filing date, according to the
principle of priority the foreign filing date should be taken into account for
assessing the novelty. In the novelty evaluation, prior art references may not be
combined, but rather the anticipation depends on the existence of a single source
that makes the claimed invention as a whole available to the public.
However, a disclosure of the invention shall not be taken into consideration if it
occurred no earlier than six months preceding the filing of the European patent
application and if it was due to, or in consequence of:
o an evident abuse in relation to the applicant or his legal predecessor; or
o the fact that the applicant or his legal predecessor has displayed the
invention at an official, or officially recognised, international exhibition
falling within the terms of the Convention on international exhibitions
signed at Paris on 22 November 1928 and last revised on 30 November
1972.
• Inventive step: once the invention is found to be novel, the following step is to
identify whether it, in view of the state of the art, is not obvious to a person having
ordinary skill in the art (PHOSITA). The relation among multiple sources of prior
art may be considered when assessing inventive step. In this evaluation, the EPO
follows a "problem-solution" approach, consisting of three main steps:
o The determination of the closest prior art, which should be directed to a similar
purpose or effect as the claimed invention, or at least belong to the same or
closely related technical field;
o The establishment of the "objective technical problem" to be solved;
o The consideration of whether or not the claimed invention, starting from the
closest prior art and the objective technical problem, would have been obvious
to the PHOSITA.
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(c) schemes, rules and methods for performing mental acts, playing games or doing
business, and programs for computers;
2.3. Rights
Art. 64 of the European Patent Convention states that “a European patent shall confer on
its proprietor from the date on which the mention of its grant is published in the European
Patent Bulletin, in each Contracting State in respect of which it is granted, the same rights
as would be conferred by a national patent granted in that State”, and that “any
infringement of a European patent shall be dealt with by national law”. It also makes
clear that if the subject-matter of the European patent is a process, the protection conferred
by the patent shall extend to the products directly obtained by such process.
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Patents confers the right to prevent others from doing certain acts in relation to the
protected invention, cited below, but they do not confer positive rights such as to
commercialize the invention. For this, regulatory approvals are often required.
• Prevent the direct use of the invention, i.e., the right to prevent any third party not
having the proprietor's consent from the following:
o making, offering, placing on the market or using a product which is the
subject matter of the patent, or importing or storing the product for those
purposes;
o using a process which is the subject matter of the patent or, where the third
party knows, or should have known, that the use of the process is
prohibited without the consent of the patent proprietor, offering the
process for use within the territory of the Member State in which that
patent has effect;
o offering, placing on the market, using, or importing or storing for those
purposes a product obtained directly by a process which is the subject
matter of the patent.
• Prevent the indirect use of the invention, i.e., the right to prevent any third party
not having the proprietor's consent from supplying or offering to supply, within
the territory of the Member States in which that patent has effect, any person other
than a party entitled to exploit the patented invention. This means, relating to an
essential element of that invention, for putting it into effect therein, when the third
party knows, or should have known, that those means are suitable and intended
for putting that invention into effect.
There are certain acts that fall outside the scope of the patent monopoly, such as:
2.4. Dimension
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2.5. Duration
Patent protection is 20 years from the date of filing of the patent application. However,
the patent may lapse earlier if the annual fees are not paid.
In order to be protectable, they generally need to meet the novelty and inventive step
requirement.
The rightsholder has the exclusive right to prevent others from making, using, offering
for sale, selling or importing a product or a process based on the protected invention,
without the owner’s prior permission.
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The term of protection is usually between 7 and 10 years, depending on the country,
without the possibility of extension or renewal.
4. Trade Secrets
DIRECTIVE (EU) 2016/943 OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE
COUNCIL of 8 June 2016 on the protection of undisclosed know-how and business
information (trade secrets) against their unlawful acquisition, use and disclosure
<https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32016L0943>
A trade secret can be protected for an unlimited period of time as far as the conditions for
the information to be considered as a trade secret are fulfilled.
‘Trade secret’ means information which meets all of the following requirements:
(a) it is secret in the sense that it is not, as a body or in the precise configuration and
assembly of its components, generally known among or readily accessible to persons
within the circles that normally deal with the kind of information in question;
(c) it has been subject to reasonable steps under the circumstances, by the person lawfully
in control of the information, to keep it secret;
The Directive has a very wide scope and covers both technical (such as designs and
drawings of software, algorithms, information concerning the manufacturing process,
formulas…) and commercial information (list of suppliers and clients, financial
information, business strategy, distribution channels…).
Proactive and continuous secrecy measures are needed in order to preserve the
confidential character of the information. Different steps must be defined for the intra-
corporate implementation:
Whether the steps taken are reasonable ultimately depends on the individual TS.
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• Unlawful acquisition:
o Without consent from the TS holder;
o By dishonest means;
o Knowing that the person passing the TS is doing so unlawfully.
• Unlawful disclosure:
o Acquisition was unlawful;
o Knowing that the person that passed the TS is doing so unlawfully;
o In breach of contract or law.
• Unlawful use:
o Acquisition was unlawful;
o In breach of contract or law;
o Knowing that the person that passed the TS did so unlawfully;
o Trading tainted goods.
3.3. Remedies
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<https://www.jipitec.eu/issues/jipitec-9-2-
2018/4725/JIPITEC_9_2_2018_138_Hoeren >
5. Industrial Designs
COUNCIL REGULATION (EC) No 6/2002 of 12 December 2001 on Community
designs <https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-
content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:32002R0006&from=EN>
‘Design’ means the appearance of the whole or a part of a product resulting from the
features of, in particular, the lines, contours, colours, shape, texture and/or materials of
the product itself and/or its ornamentation.
• Registration;
• Non-registration: only available for community designs;
• Copyright;
• Unfair competition.
3.2. Requirements
• Novelty: a design is new if no identical design has been made available to the
public:
o In the case of an unregistered Community design, before the date on which
the design for which protection is claimed has first been made available to
the public.
o In the case of a registered Community design, before the date of filing of
the application for registration of the design for which protection is
claimed, or, if priority is claimed, the date of priority.
On the relevant date, the test that should be applied is whether the same design,
or one with similar characteristics, is already available to the public through
publication, whether following registration or otherwise, through exhibition, use
in trade, or any other form of disclosure. Any design that is already available to
the public in this way will no longer be new and cannot be registered because it is
part of the prior art. The novelty of the design examined should be compared with
earlier individualized and defined designs, and not with a combination of designs
that had already been available to the public.
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The question to be asked is whether the overall impression that the design
produces on the informed user differs from the overall impression that a prior
design produced on that person. The concept of informed user lies between the
average consumer, who need not have any specific knowledge, and the sectoral
expert, who is an expert with detailed technical expertise.
• The design that is applied to a component part of a complex product must remain
visible during the normal use of the complex product and must also be novel and
have an individual character.
There are some grounds for refusing the registration of industrial designs:
3.3. Rights
• Registered Designs: the exclusive right to use their design and to prevent third
parties from using it commercially without prior consent. The aforementioned use
shall cover, in particular, the making, offering, putting on the market, importing,
exporting or using of a product in which the design is incorporated or to which it
is applied, or stocking such a product for those purposes. However, there are some
exceptions and the rights conferred shall not be exercised in respect of:
o Acts done privately and for non-commercial purposes;
o Acts done for experimental purposes;
o Acts of reproduction for the purposes of making citations or of teaching,
provided that such acts are compatible with fair trade practice and do not
unduly prejudice the normal exploitation of the design, and that mention
is made of the source.
o The equipment on ships and aircraft registered in another country when
these temporarily enter the territory of the Member State concerned;
o The importation in the Member State concerned of spare parts and
accessories for the purpose of repairing such craft;
o The execution of repairs on such craft.
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• Unregistered Designs: only protects against deliberate copying, meaning that the
design owner can only prevent third parties from making a commercial use of
their design if it has been copied and not if such third parties have created a similar
or identical design independently.
3.4. Dimension
3.5. Duration
• Registered Designs: 5 years from the date of the filing of the application, which
can be renewed for periods of five years, up to a total term of 25 years.
• Unregistered Designs: 3 years and cannot be renewed.
6. Trademarks
Regulation (EU) 2017/1001 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 14
June 2017 on the European Union trade mark <https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-
content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32017R1001>
An EU trade mark may consist of any signs, in particular words, including personal
names, or designs, letters, numerals, colours, the shape of goods or of the packaging of
goods, or sounds, provided that such signs are capable of:
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(a) distinguishing the goods or services of one undertaking from those of other
undertakings; and
(b) being represented on the Register of European Union trade marks (‘the Register’), in
a manner which enables the competent authorities and the public to determine the clear
and precise subject matter of the protection afforded to its proprietor.
There are several types of trademarks, this list being not exhaustive:
• Word marks;
• Figurative and combined marks;
• Position marks;
• Pattern marks;
• Colour marks;
• Sound marks;
• Motion marks;
• Multimedia marks;
• Olfactory marks.
4.2. Requirements
• Absolute grounds: the sign itself does not comply with certain requirements that
the law requires in order to be registered as a trade mark. The sign must be
assessed on its own, without comparing it with other signs previously registered
as trademark. Some absolute grounds for refusal are:
o Devoid of any distinctive character;
o Descriptive character as to the quality, quantity, intended purpose, value
and geographical origin.
o Deceptive character as to the nature, quality or geographical origin of the
goods or service;
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4.3. Rights
The rightsholder can prevent all third parties not having his consent from:
4.4. Dimension
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4.5. Duration:
10 years from the date of filing of the application and can be renewed indefinitely for
periods of 10 years. The protection lapses if the renewal fees are not paid.
• Within a continuous period of five years, the trademark has not been put to
genuine use, and there are no proper reasons for non-use;
• If, in consequence of acts or inactivity of the proprietor, the trademark has become
the common name in the trade for a product or service in respect of which it is
registered;
• The trademark has been used in a misleading manner.
According to the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), “domain names are
the human-friendly forms of Internet addresses, and are commonly used to find web
sites”. They also serve the for identifying a company or a trademark on the Internet.
The registration of domain names is governed by the first-come, first-served rule, i.e.,
anyone can buy a domain name if it has not been registered first by someone else. Once
the domain names are registered, they have worldwide effect.
Trademarks owners can also have also access to different means to solve the disputes:
• Court proceedings;
• Established by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers
(ICANN), a non-profit association that supervises the domain name registration
system and provides guidelines and rules:
o Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy;
o Uniform Rapid Suspension System;
o Trademark Post-Delegation Dispute Resolution Procedure.
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Copyright protects authorial works, i.e., intangible expressions of a person meriting the
title of “author”. The authors have certain rights, cited below, over their literary, scientific
and artistic works. This list, that is not exhaustive, contains works that are covered by
copyright:
6.2. Requirements
• It must be original, in the sense that it is the author’s own intellectual creation,
which "is manifested by the author's free and creative choices”. This requires the
existence of a field of choice, which means the requirement of originality is not
met when the result is dictated by technical considerations, rules, or other subject-
matter constraints which leave no room for creative freedom.
• Only something which is the expression of the author’s own intellectual creation
may be classified as a ‘work’. This means that the subject matter protected by
copyright must be expressed in a manner which makes it identifiable with
sufficient precision and objectivity, even though that expression is not necessarily
in permanent form. Copyright protection may be granted to expressions, but not
to ideas, procedures, methods of operation or mathematical concepts as such.
6.3. Rights
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o Making available to the public: in such a way that members of the public
may access them from a place and at a time individually chosen by them.
o Distribution: in respect of the original of their works or of copies thereof,
by sale or otherwise.
o Rental: in respect of the original of their works or of copies thereof
(exclusion of computer programs, buildings and works of applied art).
o Lending: in respect of the original of their works or of copies thereof
(exclusion of computer programs, buildings and works of applied art). In
case of public lending, Member States can establish the exclusive right, or
rather a remuneration right.
If the work protected is a computer program, the copyright holder has the
exclusive right to authorise or prohibit:
o In the absence of specific contractual provisions, the first two rights shall
not require authorisation by the rightsholder where they are necessary for
the use of the computer program by the lawful acquirer in accordance with
its intended purpose, including for error correction.
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They are not harmonised at EU level, so their scope of protection may vary from
one country to another.
6.4. Dimension
6.5. Duration
Copyright last for the life of the author and for 70 years after his death; or where there is
more than one author, for 70 years after the death of the last surviving author, calculated
in both cases from the first day of January of the following year.
• Anonymous and Pseudonymous works: 70 years after the work has been made
lawfully available to the public, unless the author´s identity is obvious or revealed,
in which case the general copyright term applies.
• Films: 70 years after the death of the last to survive of the principal director, the
author of the screenplay, the author of the dialogue, and the composer of any
music specifically created for use in the film.
• Musical compositions: 70 years from death of last to survive of authors of the
lyrics and the music.
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▪ Right of films producers: they have the exclusive right of reproduction, to make
available to the public, distribution, rental, and an exclusive or remuneration right,
at discretion of the Member States, for the public lending of the first fixations of
films, in respect of the original and copies of their films. The term of protection is
of 50 years after the fixation is made. However, if the film is lawfully published
or lawfully communicated to the public during this period, the rights shall expire
50 years from the date of the first such publication or the first such communication
to the public, whichever is the earlier.
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▪ Right of critical and scientific publications of public domain: Member States may
protect them for a maximum term of 30 years from the time when the publication
was first lawfully published.
▪ Sui generis database right: for a database to be protected by this right, there must
be substantial investment, quantitative or qualitative, either in obtaining, verifying
or presenting the content of the database. Conversely, investment in the creation
of data does not lead to protection. The maker of a database has the right to prevent
extraction and/or re-utilization of the whole or of a substantial part, evaluated
qualitatively and/or quantitatively, of the contents of that database. There are
exceptions allowing the extraction for private purposes of the contents of a non-
electronic database; for the purposes of illustration for teaching or scientific
research, and for purposes of public security or an administrative or judicial
procedure. The period of protection is of 15 years, running from the end of the
year in which the database is completed. If the database is made available to the
public before the end of that period, the right expires 15 years from the end of the
year in which the database was first made available. A substantial change to the
contents of the database which would result in the database being considered to
be a substantial new investment, shall qualify the database resulting from that
investment for its own term of protection (new 15 years period).
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Open source software (OSS) and free software are different concepts. The free software
movement uses the term “free” for referring to the software that respects the “user’s
essential freedoms”: “to run it, to study and change it, and to redistribute copies with or
without changes”. Open source focuses on the practical consequences enabled by these
licenses rather than on campaign for principles.
There is not an official definition of the term "open source”, but most of the community
supports the definition proposed by the Open Source Initiative (OSI), according to which
each licence must comply with the 10 criteria: Free Redistribution, Source Code, Derive
Works, Integrity of the Author’s Source Code, No Discrimination Against Persons or
Groups, No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor, Distribution of Licence, Licence
Must Not Be Specific to a Product, Licence Must Not Restrict Other Software, Licence
Must Be Technology-Neutral. <https://opensource.org/osd>
Open source licences are conditional copyright licences, i.e., they grant all copyrights
while imposing the compliance with certain conditions for their exercise. Some open
source licences contain patent grants and defensive termination clauses.
• Restrictive or copyleft: they require that the licensed software and any
modifications must be redistributed under the same license terms. Examples:
Strong (any program that contains the copyleft code must only contain this type
of code): GNU Affero General Public License
<https://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.en.html>; General Public Licence (GPL)
<https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.en.html>; Weak (they allow dynamic
linking and sometimes also any kind of integration as long as the copyleft code
remains in its own file): GNU Lesser General Public License
<https://www.gnu.org/licenses/lgpl-3.0.en.html>; Mozilla Public License
<https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/MPL/2.0/> .
• When all upstream licences are permissive there are no compatibility problems,
as they impose no restrictions on what code is added to the program or how it can
be distributed. Modifications may be distributed under permissive, copyleft or
proprietary terms.
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redistributing the merged program and its further modifications. Yet, there are a
few incompatibilities, for example, between Apache 2.0 and the version 2 of the
GPL, or between the primary version of BSD and the GPL family. Conversely,
code released under copyleft licences cannot be added to some permissive open
source projects. For example, Apache 2.0 code can be included in GPLv3 projects,
but the opposite is not allowed.
• The most problematic scenario arises when two copyleft licences are used
together, because each of them prohibits the imposition of additional restrictions
on the program, but at the same time they include different terms that imply
additional restrictions with respect to the others. Consequently, copyleft licences
are incompatible unless a special compatibility clause is included, allowing the
component to retain its original licence, while permitting the combined program
into which it is integrated to be distributed under different downstream terms.
Codes released only under weak copyleft terms might coexist, because although
they prevent the component from becoming proprietary, they allow it to be part
of a larger proprietary program. In this scenario, each component is subjected to
its own licence.
Traditionally, the enforcement of open source licences has been conducted under the so-
called "community enforcement". The process starts with a warning letter or a report
notifying the non-compliance with the terms of the licence. In most cases, this initial
contact is reportedly sufficient for overcoming the problem. The open source project
steward (either an institution or the main sponsor) initiates judicial procedures only in
case of continue disobedience following notification. Although voluntary compliance
remains predominant, commercial litigation around open source has been also present
since a few years now. Consequently, IPR holders may also enforce their rights by
claiming IPR infringement and/or contractual breach, depending on the jurisdiction.
• Richard Stallman, Why Open Source misses the point of Free Software
<https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.en.html>
• Lawrence Rosen, Open Source Licensing Software Freedom and Intellectual
Property Law (Prentice Hall, 2004) <https://rosenlaw.com/open-source-
licensing-software-freedom-and-intellectual-property-law/>
• Heather Meeker, Open Source for Business: A Practical Guide to Open
Source Software Licensing´ (Last Mile Publishing, 2020).
• Eben Moglen, Enforcing the GNU GPL
<https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/enforcing-gpl.html>
• Justine Pila and Paul Torremans, European Intellectual Property Law (OUP
Oxford, 2019).
• The European IPR Helpdesk, Your Guide to IP in Europe
<https://www.ipoi.gov.ie/en/commercialise-your-ip/taking-ip-global/eu-ipr-
guide-europe.pdf>
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