The relevance of the project is related to the integration of Ukraine and the EU within the framework of the Association Agreement between the European Union and its Member States, of the one part, and Ukraine, of the other part, of 2014 and the status of Ukraine as a candidate for EU accession, which implies the approximation of Ukrainian legislation to EU legislation.
In 2019-2020 amendments to the laws on industrial property were adopted in Ukraine and in December 2022, the new version of the Law on Copyright and Related Rights was adopted. However, in the mentioned laws only IP provisions of the Association Agreement and to some extent other provisions of EU acts were taken into account.
The peculiarity of the Association Agreements with Ukraine, Moldova, and Georgia is that, regarding intellectual property, the countries should take into account only the provisions on intellectual property specified directly in the Agreements.
Such provisions are mainly extracts from EU IP directives and do not reflect the content of EU directives and regulations as a whole, as well as decisions of the EU Court of Justice on the interpretation of EU acts. As shown (Kaptisa, Association Agreements and Problems Approximating Intellectual Property Legislation of Third Countries with the EU Acquis: The Case of Ukraine, in Richter Heiko (ed), Competition and Intellectual Property Law in Ukraine. MPI Studies on Intellectual Property and Competition Law, Berlin 2023), the failure to fully consider the provisions of EU IP acts in the national legislation of the candidate countries, as well as the decisions of the Court of Justice on interpretation of the acts does not allow effective application of national legislation.
Also, the experience of the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, which joined the EU, shows that in the framework of legal approximation - all EU directives and regulations in the field of intellectual property, adopted at the time of accession, were taken into account.
Thus, an important task is to implement the second step in approximation of Ukrainian national IP legislation to that of the EU by taking into account substantive provisions of EU directives and regulations as well as the most important ECJ rulings on interpretation of the acts. Accordingly, conducting scientific research on these issues is relevant.
Comparative studies of IP legislation in the EU and Ukraine were carried out by the author for a number of years and published in the author's monographs in 2017, 2013, 2006, as well as by other specialists, but the analysis was made only until 2017.
During the study, it is supposed to provide research of the latest period in the development of EU IP law: 2017-2022, by using a unified methodology, including protection of the rights to the inventions, industrial designs, trade marks, GIs, plant varieties, topographies of semiconductor products, trade secrets; copyright and related rights (areas that correspond to EU directives), IP civil law enforcement and customs enforcement.
The study includes for each area of copyright and related rights, industrial property, IP enforcement:
- analysis of the EU acts, legislative initiatives, reports of the European Commission, decisions of the European Court of Justice on the interpretation of EU acts;
- comparative analysis of the provisions of the acts of the EU and Ukraine;
- preparation of recommendations on amendments and changes to Ukrainian legislation, according to the EU acts.
The methodology includes the study of implementation EU acts by EU Member States. Special attention is given to the mechanisms for applying the provisions of the DSM Copyright Directive, 2019, Trade Secrets Directive, 2016, as well as the selection of the EU Court of Justice 2017-2022 decisions, which are of particular importance for the implementation of EU acts and their application
Based on the latest EU policy documents in the field of IP, initiatives, recommendations of the European Commission, it is expected to prepare proposals to refine the draft National Strategy for the Development of Intellectual Property in Ukraine.
Based on the project's results, it is planned to prepare a monograph on modern development of EU IP law and approximation of Ukrainian legislation to the EU legislation. Implementation of the project will allow to provide the results of the study of current IP law trends in the EU to the general public, parliamentarians, specialists from the ministries, IP professionals, researchers, and students; and to define directions for changes in Ukrainian legislation, based on current development of EU legislation and practice in 2017-2022
