On April 29th in 2004 the European Parliament and Council adopted the Directive on the enforcement of intellectual property rights. The objective of the Directive is to “approximate legislative systems so as to ensure a high, equivalent and homogeneous level of protection in the internal market.”
The directive regularizes how the member states of the European Union should act against Intellectual Property Right infringements. The directive is more known as IPRED (Intellectual Property Right Enforcement Directive).
On May 24th 2011 the Commission published a press release, about a strategy they have adopted to revamp the legal framework in which IPR (Intellectual Property Rights) operate. The Commission mentions some, but not all, of the intellectual property rights in the press release. “Intellectual property rights (IPR), which comprise patents, trademarks, designs and geographical indications, as well as copyright (author's rights) and rights related to copyright (for performers, producers and broadcasters), have been around for centuries.”
Amelia’s first question (2012-10-10) is about if the word ‘comprises’ is meant to be understood as being exhaustive in the statement that starts the press release. The Commission answered that the word ‘comprises’ does not mean that the list is exhaustive. They also said that the directive about protection for intellectual rights apply on all intellectual property infringements.
The next 13 questions Amelia has asked the Commission is about which criteria that has been used to determine that different types of intellectual rights should be included in the list of intellectual property rights covered by article 2 of the directive and which intellectual property rights that the Commission regard as falling outside the scope of the Enforcement Directive 2004/48/EC. The Commission has answered that the list following the word ‘comprises’ is not exhaustive, and that the directive is applicable on all sorts of intellectual property infringements under community or national law.
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//TEXT+WQ+E-2012-009093+0+DOC+XML+V0//EN
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//TEXT+WQ+E-2013-000953+0+DOC+XML+V0//EN
The intellectual property rights that Amelia mentions in these questions are:
sui generis rights of database makers
trademarks rights
rights related to copyright
rights of the creator of the topographies of a semiconductor product
design rights
patent rights including rights derived from supplementary protection certificates geographical indications
utility model rights
trade names in so far as these are protected as exclusive rights in the national law concerned
plant variety rights
copyright
