Vizjak and German Justice Minister Discuss EU Patent System
Economy Minister Andrej Vizjak met in Ljubljana on Friday German Justice Minister Brigitte Zypries to discuss intellectual property, in particular the future unified EU patent system, and said after the meeting that Slovenia wanted to make headway in that area during its EU presidency.
The European Community Patent represents a quality upgrade of the patent system and the protection of intellectual property in Europe, said Vizjak, and agreed with Zypries that the system had to be updated, simplified and unified.
Talks on a unified patent system are held as part of the discussion on legislation related to judicial protection of the European Community Patent, said Vizjak. One of the objectives of Slovenia's EU presidency is to achieve progress at the expert level, which would enable the solutions to be implemented as soon as possible.
The officials agreed that they would continue to look for solutions at the expert level, and that the discussion on patents and their judicial protection should be carried out in a package in order to avoid incomplete solutions.
Vizjak and Zypries also discussed the directive on the legal protection of designs, where Slovenia follows the proposal of the European Commission for the abolition of design protection, while Germany holds a somewhat different position. "We discussed possibilities to find a compromise and an eventual solution for this issue," said Vizjak.
Zypries added that there had been different positions on patent law for 30 years and that this was a very complicated question, and assessed as very ambitious Slovenia's decision to take up this issue during its EU presidency.
According to Vizjak, political breakthrough regarding the issue during Slovenia's EU presidency should not be expected, while there may be decisive progress at the technical level. There are some bigger problems, not only technical but also political ones, for example the use of language, he said.
More articles from this issue:
Archive
|