Effective application of copyright and related rights (enforcement)

Abstract

Are the means of protecting intellectual property adequate to deter and to fight piracy at the global scale, in particular leveraged by ICT? This paper studies the procedural and substantive remedies adopted for the enforcement of intellectual property rights, with particular emphasis on copyright and related rights. It starts from the Commission's Green Paper of 1988 and from the data of the Observatory of the European Union Intellectual Property Office and of the OECD on the scale of piracy and counterfeiting, and it surveys the normative framework formed by the Paris Convention, the Berne Convention, the Rome Convention, Part III of the TRIPS Agreement, the 1996 WIPO Treaties and Directive 2004/48/EC. It examines the principle of fair and equitable proceedings, the competent court and private law remedies, criminal and administrative sanctions and customs control, as well as codes of conduct and the collaboration of industry. It questions the suitability of intellectual property as a tool against a phenomenon that also affects public revenue and consumer confidence in the quality and authenticity of cultural products, and it argues that other branches of the law should be placed at the forefront of the fight against piracy.