Intellectual Property and Innovation Protection

7A System that is the Victim of its own Success or an Anomaly that should be Remedied?

Ever since the 1980s, the trend towards the strengthening of intellectual property regimes has resulted in this respect in a very significant increase in the volumes of activity and the sums involved. What may be perceived as an overall inflationist trend is taking shape globally in different ways, not only through an intensification in terms of trademarks, industrial design rights, copyright, counterfeiting and piracy, but also through a proliferation of patents. This development both saturates patent offices and raises questions about the quality of patents and their specific outlines. This quantitative explosion, besides straining courts, also concerns the number of disputes among companies as well as the amount of damages awarded. It raises the issue of a need for balance, and recent reforms finally started to address this problem, especially in the United States, at the beginning of the decade.

7.1. The escalation of trademarks, industrial design rights, copyright, counterfeiting and piracy

The consolidation of intellectual property rights may specifically be presented as a necessary response to the growing problems of counterfeiting – as a violation of trademark, industrial design right or patent law – and piracy – in terms of copyright and neighboring rights. It is true that this phenomenon is developing very fast, strengthened by the emergence of online shopping in particular. Its ...