Survey on industrial property rights in the Information Society
The European Commission, DG XV, is conducting a survey on industrial property rights in the Information Society, with the aim of taking stock of existing obstacles and assessing the need for Community action. Existing industrial property rules were almost all created at a time when the Information Society was unknown. Consequently, the development of a regulatory framework for the Information Society may include a reassessment of the rules relating to industrial property, to ensure that they still correspond to the needs of European enterprise. In particular, Community action may be needed to avoid divergent national regulations fragmenting the Internal Market. New regulations would need to follow the established rules of the Internal Market: free movement of goods, services, people and capital; a level playing field and high levels of protection. With the aim of assessing the current situation in respect of industrial property rights, DG XV of the Commission, responsible for the Internal Market, is conducting a survey of interested parties. Respondents to the survey are asked to comment on issues related to obstacles encountered when trying to obtain or enforce industrial property rights in the context of the Information Society. The survey addresses specific problems affecting the various individual industrial property rights, such as patents, trademarks, utility models and designs, particularly in the case of protecting software. In addition, it addresses certain issues which are more general and affect industrial property as a whole. Some of these issues are legal and concern the application of the concepts of territoriality, novelty, prior subject matter, the date of reference and private use. Two issues are of a more technical nature: counterfeiting and the link between protectability and standardization, especially in relation to interoperability and interconnectivity. The Commission welcomes comments from all interested parties, by mail or e-mail. These should be submitted by 29 November 1996 at the latest.