The Council of the EU views the European Commission’s upcoming Intellectual Property Action Plan as an important contribution to the recovery from the pandemic.
On 10 November 2020, the Council of the EU adopted Conclusions on intellectual property (IP) policy and the revision of the industrial designs system in the EU. The Council Conclusions follow on the heels of the European Commission’s (EC) Communication of 10 March 2020 on “A New Industrial Strategy for Europe” that announced an IP Action Plan, which will assess the need to upgrade the IP legal framework. The goal is to better protect companies in order to allow them to grow, create jobs and fight IP theft. The New Industrial Strategy strives for an updated IP policy that will play an important role in strengthening the EU’s tech sovereignty and promote a global level playing field for EU companies. This should be achieved by better protecting IP, such as brands, designs, patents as well as data and algorithms.
The related EC Communication “An SME Strategy for a sustainable and digital Europe”, also of 10 March this year, set out that the upcoming IP Action Plan will specifically focus on measures that make the IP system more effective for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), especially through simplifying IP registration procedures, for instance via a reform of the EU legislation on industrial designs. Another important goal is to improve access to strategic IP advice for SMEs. This could be achieved by making IP advice available in all EU-level research and innovation (R&I) funding programmes. An additional goal to support SMEs will be to facilitate the use of IP as a lever to gain access to finance.
The Council Conclusions highlight that the promotion of European innovation and creativity has become even more important in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. In the view of the Council, IP constitutes a key tool to rebuild the EU economy by translating R&I results into the economy and to contribute to the challenges of the green and digital transitions. In this context, the Council notes also with interest the plans to strengthen Europe’s R&I system as laid down in the EC’s Communication on a “new European Research Area” of 30 September 2020 (see SwissCore article).
The Council encourages the EC to swiftly present its announced IP Action Plan together with related initiatives to make the EU’s IP protection more effective. The Council’s input for the Action Plan stresses the importance of a strong, efficient, transparent and balanced system of IP protection. A balanced system should ensure IP protection and – at the same time – fair access to innovation in order to help EU companies to effectively capitalise on their IP and make use of new technologies, such as artificial intelligence, 3D printing or blockchain. The Council highlights also the importance of the IP system for “green” patents as a driver for the further development of sustainable technologies.
The Council Conclusions push for IP protection to become more affordable, especially for SMEs, echoing the EC’s above mentioned Communication. Also the effective sharing of IP should be promoted. Furthermore, the Conclusions touch on biotechnology, geographical indications, IP enforcement and designs. On the latter, the Council calls on the EC to present proposals for the revision of the respective legislation to modernise the EU design protection systems and to make design protection more attractive for individual designers, especially also for SMEs.
Finally, the Council Conclusions invite EU Member States to join the efforts in strengthening Europe’s innovation performance.