CEIPI's Newsletter n° 38 - December 21, 2017

CEIPI is pleased to announce that Mr. Benoît Battistelli, President of the European Patent Office, has been elected, on 28 November 2017, Chairman of the CEIPI Administrative Board for a 3-year term.

Mr. Benoît Battistelli was elected President of the CEIPI Administrative Board at the Assembly on 28 November 2017 for a 3-year term. Mr. Battistelli succeeds Mr. António Campinos, Executive Director of the European Union Intellectual Property Office, who has chaired the Council since 2013.

Mr. Battistelli is the current President of the European Patent Office since 1^st July 2010. A graduate of the Paris Institute of Political Studies (IEP) and the National School of Administration (ENA), Mr. Battistelli began his career as a senior civil servant in the French Ministry of the Economy and Finance.

Among other positions, in 1997, Mr. Battistelli was appointed Regional Director for Foreign Trade for the Ile-de-France region. In 1999, he became director with responsibility for innovation, competitiveness and industrial property policy at the Ministry of the Economy, Finance and Industry. Mr. Battistelli acted as Chief Advisor to Nicole Fontaine, before being appointed Director General of the French National Institute for Industrial Property (INPI) in May 2004.

CEIPI warmly thanks Mr. António Campinos for the support he has given to CEIPI since 2013 and addresses to Mr. Benoît Battistelli his warm congratulations and wishes of success for this mandate.

The Center for International Intellectual Property Studies (CEIPI) is pleased to announce the publication of the fourth issue in the CEIPI/ICTSD series on Global Perspectives and Challenges for the Intellectual Property System, produced jointly with the International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development (ICTSD).

This new issue, Current Alliances in International Intellectual Property Lawmaking: The emergence and Impact of the Mega-Regionals, edited by Pedro Roffe, Senior Associate at the International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development and Xavier Seuba, Senior Lecturer, Academic Coordinator and Judicial Training Manager at CEIPI, explores the impact of plurilateralism agreements on trade related international intellectual property law.   

 The chapters making up this volume review systemic, substantive and enforcement-related issues arising from plurilateralism, and do so by analysing the past, the current context and the most recently negotiated plurilateral trade agreements. Times have clearly been turbulent for global trade. Mounting critiques on the apparent failure of trade to enhance productivity, investment and technology flows have only been met with a greater slump in the growth of global trade and the rise of protectionism. At the same time, the number of free trade agreements has burgeoned as a result of longstanding disagreements, between countries at the multilateral level on a variety of issues.

Against this backdrop, this volume gathers contributions by well-known researchers in International Law, International Trade and Intellectual Property Law, writing from distinctive perspectives and reflecting on the systemic consequences of plurilateralism and the implications of these trends for the international system, with contributions by Thomas Cottier, Frederick M. Abbott, Mira Burri, Peter K. Yu, Padmashree Gehl Sampath, Pedro Roffe and Xavier Seuba.

The CEIPI-ICTSD publication series provides high quality academic and policy-oriented papers dealing with topics that are of global relevance because of their normative pre-eminence, economic relevance, and socio-economic impact.

The previous issues in the series can be consulted at:

• Intellectual Property and Access to Science and Culture: Convergence or Conflict? (Issue 3 – November 2016)
• Specialised Intellectual Property Courts - Issues and Challenges (Issue 2 - March 2016)
• Rethinking International Intellectual Property Law: What Institutional Environment for the Development and Enforcement of IP Law? (Issue 1 - November 2015)

Click here to download the volume.

The CEIPI is happy to announce the upcoming publication of Xavier Seuba, Senior Lecturer, Training Coordinator and Judicial Training Manager at CEIPI, scheduled for September 2017, “The Global Regime for the Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights”, Cambridge University Press.

This book offers a comprehensive description of the international norms and bodies dealing with the enforcement of intellectual property rights, and analyzes multilateral, plurilateral, and bilateral treaties, and their national implementation, along with civil, border, and criminal enforcement. The book also explores the interface between the enforcement of intellectual property rights and the norms regulating international trade, competition, and human rights, as well as the conceptual and systemic aspects of enforcement, while illustrating the importance of these rights with examples in litigation.

Click here to buy the book.

In order to contribute to the work on the ongoing copyright reform at the EU level, CEIPI drafted an Opinion on the proposal to amend the existing system of exceptions and limitations to copyright in the EU, as presented in the European Commission’s Proposal for a Directive on copyright in the Digital Single Market of 14 September 2016. Other topics of the reform are reviewed in separate position papers.

The Opinion supports the Commission’s proposal to introduce mandatory exceptions and limitations, promoting harmonisation and facilitating thus the creation of the Digital Single Market. The document provides a preliminary assessment of the proposed exceptions and limitations, draws attention to their selected aspects and considers room for improvement where necessary. The analysis focuses on the provisions of the Directive Proposal on text and data mining, on teaching activities and on preservation of cultural heritage. More generally, the Opinion recommends extending the scope of the reform by rendering other exceptions and limitations mandatory and by creating, in addition to the listed exempted uses, an opening clause that would secure the adaptability of the system in the future to new social, economic and technological developments. Such an opening clause would provide the legal framework with the necessary flexibility to address new uses justified by important public interest rationales not covered by the existing exceptions and limitations.

CEIPI follows and comments the main developments in the area of intellectual property at national, European and international levels. Development of a balanced and efficient intellectual property system of the European Union is of great interest to the centre. This Opinion follows the previous CEIPI Opinion on the proposed introduction of neighbouring rights for press publishers.

Please click here to access the Directive Proposal, the Impact Assessment and the Opinion of CEIPI.

To access previous position papers click here.

The no. 31 from October 2017 of the magazine “Savoir(s)”, of the University of Strasbourg, devotes an article on the advent of virtual and its impact on law.

In the article “Propriété intellectuelle : une nouvelle donne ?”, Ms. Stéphanie Carre, Associate Professor at CEIPI, specialist in Copyright Law and New technologies Law, provides some answers in the field of Copyright.

Click here to read the article.

Early Stage Researcher: Clara Ducimetière, Project title: Innovation and Ethics

 Clara Ducimetière graduated with a joint degree in law and foreign languages from the Université Pierre Mendès France, Grenoble, before she moved to Colombia to study international law at the Universidad del Rosario. This was followed by a return to Europe where she specialised in European and International Intellectual Property law at the CEIPI in Strasbourg. Before starting the PhD with the EIPIN Innovation Society, she was a trainee at the European Union Intellectual Property Office in Alicante, Spain. Counted among her key strengths are her ability to work in several languages and her self-assurance in multicultural environments.

Publications: The increasing recognition of second medical use patents: Legal treatment and public health issues

Email: cducimetiere@ceipi.edu

Early Stage Researcher: Natasha Mangal, Project title: Creativity and Access: Adaptation of Copyright to the Digital Economy

Natasha Mangal holds a Juris Doctor and Certificate in Intellectual Property: Art, Museum and Cultural Heritage Law from the DePaul University College of Law in Chicago, IL. She served as Symposium Director and Editor on DePaul’s IP Law Journal, and competed on her school’s National Appellate Moot Court team, earning titles of semifinalist and best competition brief. She also served as President of DePaul’s IP Law Society, collaborating with the school’s Center for IP Law and Information Technology (CIPLIT) to host events uniting legal academics and practitioners from throughout the U.S. She received two scholarships for her performance, and was given an award of distinction for completing over 200 hours of pro-bono legal work.

Professionally, Natasha has held numerous legal internships ranging from public institutions to courtrooms, including the Chicago History Museum, IRI inc., Global IP Law Group, PLK Law Group, and the Circuit Court of Cook County for the Honorable Judge Daniel Patrick Brennan. At DePaul’s IP Law Clinic, she directly served clients on issues of Copyright and Trademark law pursuant to her 7-11 license.

Her interests regard legal issues surrounding artist rights and policymaking in IP law.

Email: mangal@ceipi.edu

Researcher: Tamar Khuchua, Project title: Innovation and Justice: Constructing Just and Efficient Court Systems

Tamar Khuchua obtained a Master of Laws degree within the European Business Law programme from Lund University in Sweden and has been awarded a Swedish Institute scholarship. She holds a Bachelor of Laws degree from Tbilisi State University in Georgia. Tamar’s main research interest has been the intersection of human rights and business law with the focus on European IP and competition law. As a student, Tamar has participated in various international conferences in Georgia and Sweden and has won numerous prizes for her successful performances. Apart from her native Georgian language, Tamar speaks five foreign languages (English, Russian, Swedish, Armenian and a little French).

Publications: Corporate Human Rights Protection in EU Competition Law Enforcement - The Standard of Protection of Companies’ Rights in the Light of ECHR'

Email: khuchua@ceipi.edu

For further information on the project: http://www.eipin-innovationsociety.org/index

In the context of the lecture series “(Re)thinking Intellectual Property, Fundamental Questions and New Perspectives”, the CEIPI has the pleasure of welcoming  on Tuesday 13 February 2018, 18h00 (TBC), amphi 23, Ms. Irene Calboli, Professor of Law, Texas A&M University School of Law, Lee Kong Chian Fellow and Visiting Professor, Singapore Management University School of Law, and Transatlantic Technology Law Forum Fellow, Stanford Law School. Her public lecture will focus on the topic “Geographical Indications at the Crossroads of Trade, Development, and Marketing: What Way Forward?”. The debate will be animated by Prof. Christophe Geiger, Director General of CEIPI.

Click here to access the abstract and her biography.

In the framework of the “Lecture series of Kléber Bookshop”, which brighten up the cultural life of the city of Strasbourg, CEIPI organizes monthly conference-debate on current issues of copyright.

Intellectual property is no longer, today, only a matter of specialized lawyers, but a regular topic of the public debate, especially thanks to the digital revolution but also thanks to its influence on fundamental societal questions, such as access to knowledge or the appropriation of living things. The upcoming European Commission's copyright reform and other international treaty negotiations show the importance and topicality of these subjects. The topic of these lectures will focus on issues related to copyright and neighboring rights, as well as issues related to the evolution of patent law and trademark law.

The fact that the “intellectual property is part of the public debate” leads the CEIPI of wanting to bring its knowledge and know-how in the framework of open debates and broadly participatory as possible, and no longer only to specialists and students in Law.

These lectures will be moderated by Mr. Franck Macrez, Associate Professor at CEIPI. Speakers will be academics, practitioners (legal practitioners, lawyers ...), journalists, politicians (institutional, parliamentarians ...), business leaders.

Click here to download the program of the first edition that will take place on 12 January 2018.

CEIPI is happy to announce that Asako Wechs Hatanaka, Doctor of CEIPI, University of Strasbourg and Associate professor at Ritsumeikan University (Kyoto, Japan), was awarded on 5^th September 2017, the Best Paper for an Emerging Scholar for her article “Optmising Mediation for Intellectual Property Law - Perspectives from EU, French and UK Law”. It is a synthesis of her PhD thesis entitled “Mediation and intellectual property law. A European and comparative perspective”, written under the supervision of Prof. Christophe Geiger and defended at University of Strasbourg on 26^th September 2016.

Mrs. Asako Wechs Hatanaka also received on 8^th December 2016, the thesis prize ex aequo of the Research federation “L’Europe en mutation” for her thesis.

The CEIPI/WIPO/INPI Advanced Training Course on Intellectual Property, Technology Transfer and Licensing will take place from 11 to 22 June 2018 in Strasbourg. This training course is jointly organized since 1978 by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), the Centre for International Intellectual Property Studies (CEIPI) and the French National Institute of Industrial Property (INPI). Like in the past editions, the present course touches upon the legal and economic aspects of technology transfer and licensing.

The training is addressed to technology transfer professionals, including professionals working in university technology transfer offices, national and regional intellectual property offices and science and technology ministries. With an integrated and practical approach, the CEIPI/WIPO/INPI Advanced Training Course on Intellectual Property, Technology Transfer and Licensing will be also of the interest of lawyers and economists.

Participants benefit from the expertise of specialists from several international organizations, prestigious research institutes and universities, and renowned experts, while interacting with professionals coming from all over the world. The interest of the program for developed, emerging and developing economies makes it a unique forum to exchange experiences and share opportunities.

Click to download the program of the 2017 edition.

For further information, please contact Ms. Anne-Catherine Brunck for administrative questions/registration (brunck@ceipi.edu), or Xavier Seuba for questions related to the academic content of the program (xavier.seuba@ceipi.edu).

The first edition of the new advanced training program “Intellectual Property, Intermediary Liability and Online Platforms’ Regulation”, took place in Strasbourg from 7 to 9 December 2017.

As a lawyer, entrepreneur, or policy maker working at the forefront of Internet and technology industry, you must know whether and when access providers and communications platforms like Google, Twitter and Facebook are liable for their users’ online activities. This is one of the most relevant emerging issue for online businesses and a key factor that affects innovation and free speech.

This training program gathered together media, creative economies, and high-tech professionals and entrepreneurs, lawyers, policy makers, judges, and students.

For more detailed information regarding the training, please click here for the program.

For further information, please contact Ms. Diana Laplanche for administrative questions/registration (dlaplanche@ceipi.edu) or Mr. Giancarlo Frosio for questions related to the academic content of the program (gcfrosio@ceipi.edu).

http://www.ceipi.edu/en/training-seminars/intellectual-property-intermediary-liability-and-online-platforms-regulation/

For the second time CEIPI successfully organized a training program for best practice in industrial IP management.

Organised from 19 to 20 October 2017, these executive IP management days have discussed the consequences of new tends like Internet of Things (IoT) and Industry 4.0 including the digital transformation of business models throughout different industries, products and services with detailed and comprehensive cases of successful IP strategies and their implementation.

IP strategy development of Vorwerk for its kitchen machine Thermomix and the organizational implementation of this strategy have been addressed. Furthermore the IP management practices of WILO in the field of high efficiency pumps and of ABUS and their home security system technology have been considered.

This workshop’s aim was to provide insight into IP strategy development within the new paradigm of digital business models and service industries with practical issues in systematic synthetic invention, IP protection of perceived customer benefits and sustainable organizational change in companies.

This training course, led by the Prof. Alexander Wurzer, Adjunct Professor at CEIPI and Director of Studies of the Master in IP Law and Management (MIPLM) was mainly addressed to IP professionals coming from all over Europe, but also to graduate students interested in these topics.

The framework was designed for inspired discussions and networking.

Click here for further information.

In October 2017 a new wave of students from the CEIPI and other universities started their traineeship at both the EPO and the EUIPO and thus join this ever-growing network of IP professionals.

CEIPI addresses its congratulations to its students!

For further information regarding this program, please click below:

https://euipo.europa.eu/knowledge/course/view.php?id=1851

http://www.ceipi.edu/en/international-cooperation-and-partnerships/eipin-network/pan-european-seal-professional-traineeship-programme/

The CEIPI is organizing courses preparing for the EQE 2018. The corresponding training has started in September 2017.

Enrolment for the following courses is still possible:

• seminar preparing for paper D of the EQE 2018, from 8 to 12 January 2018 in Strasbourg
• intensive last-minute courses for the pre-examination and for papers A, B, C and D of the EQE for French-speaking candidates, from 23 to 27 January 2018 in Strasbourg
• intensive last-minute courses for the pre-examination and for papers A, B and C of the EQE for English- and German-speaking candidates, from 23 to 26 January 2018 in Munich.

For further information about these courses and the enrolment forms, click here.

The LLM degree of Vanderbilt allows students to take the Bar exam, especially the New York’s one. About sixty students from Europe, Latin America, Asia and Africa are accepted into the LLM program each year. The LLM program is fully integrated into the JD (Juris Doctor degree or Doctor of Law degree) program and enables students to register to the same courses. An intensive and optional legal English course is also provided in July.

The scholarship recipient will be chosen jointly by the CEIPI and Vanderbilt.

For more details regarding enrolment:

http://law.vanderbilt.edu/prospective-students/llm-program-/llm-admissions-process.php

(CEIPI’s candidates won’t be asked to pay the 50 $ required to enroll).

The applications in English including:

• detailed CV
• cover letter
• last transcript of records
• proof of proficiency in English (IELTS, TOEFL, etc.; a minimum score of 100 is required on the TOEFL and 7.5 on the IELTS)

 will have to be sent to asandulesei@ceipi.edu (copy ceipi-dg@ceipi.edu).

Mrs. Cynthia Coleman, Director, LL.M. Admissions, Recruitment and Outreach for the LLM programme at Vanderbilt will be present at CEIPI on the 4^th December 2017 in order to present the programme.

Deadline for application: 28 February 2018.

For more information, please contact:

Ionela ASANDULESEI
03 68 85 80 57
asandulesei@ceipi.edu

On 6 and 7 November 2017 three early stage researchers of the EIPIN Innovation Society program from CEIPI, Ms. Clara Ducimetière, Ms. Tamar Khuchua, and Ms. Natasha Mangal, delivered presentations on their PhD topics at the 17th IEEM (Institute of European Studies of Macau) Intellectual Property Seminar held in Macau, China.

On 6 November, Ms. Ducimetière and Ms. Khuchua presented their topics to a public of professionals and students from all over the world.  As part of her research on Innovation and Ethics, Ms. Ducimetière addresses the intersection between IP and the protection of investment in EU trade agreements. In her presentation, she underlined the growing concerns around investor-state dispute resolution mechanisms and the impact on the regulatory flexibility of states. The objective of the doctoral research is to draft policy recommendations and guidelines on the development of IP norms in these fields.

Ms. Khuchua’s research topic is on Innovation and Justice: Constructing Just and Efficient Court Systems. In her presentation she touched upon some potential issues that she would like to address in her research, such as pros and cons of general and specialized IP courts, the background of judges adjudicating on IP matters, the efficiency of proceedings in the light of innovation and some other procedural aspects inside the courts.  

On 7 November, Ms. Mangal joined with two other EIPIN researchers on a panel regarding digital copyright, collective management organizations, decision-making institutions. Ms. Mangal’s research particularly regards the Adaptation of Copyright to the Digital Economy in the EU, and in her presentation she framed potential avenues for further investigation such as norm-setting mechanisms in copyright law.

Mr. Yann Basire, Associate Professor at the University of Haute-Alsace and Lecturer at the CEIPI, spoke at the conference organized by the “Association des Jeunes Universitaires spécialisés en propriété intellectuelle (JUSPI)” on the topic “The future of Intellectual Property”, that took place on 3 Octobre 2017 at the Faculty of Law, University Paris-Descartes.

M. Basire spoke on the topic « Les marques, un droit de propriété intellectuelle comme les autres ? ».

Click here for further information.

We inform you that the CEIPI will be closed from December 22 in the evening to January 8, 2018 in the morning.