IP2Innovate

Professor Ansgar Ohly is one of Germany’s most respected law professors and an authority on intellectual property law across Europe. He is the Chair for Civil Law, Intellectual Property and Competition Law at the University of Munich. He is also a visiting professor at Oxford University.

IP2Innovate

IP2Innovate welcomes the report on EU competitiveness by Mario Draghi published yesterday, and in particular its emphasis on improving innovation. The in-depth report cements competitiveness and boosting European productivity at the heart of the EU’s political agenda. It calls for Europe to improve the pipeline from innovation to commercialisation.

IP2Innovate

There is broad agreement on the need for taking proportionality considerations into account in patent litigation cases but it’s not being applied in the courts in Europe. As a result, injunctions are being handed out automatically in almost all cases, even though EU legislation – the IP Rights Enforcement Directive (IPRED) – specifically calls for judges to apply proportionality. IPRED needs targeted amendments in order to correct this. In his paper titled Permanent Injunctions and the Reception of the Principle of Proportionality in the European Union, Rafal Sikorski, assistant professor, Chair of European Law at the Adam Mickiewicz University of Poznan in Poland, calls for reform of the directive. “The EU should consider introducing a set of factors to IPRED that the courts should consider when applying proportionality. In fact, this approach has already been taken by the EU legislator in the Trade Secrets Directive,” Professor Sikorski said in an interview.