eSignature Licitness for Assignment of Intellectual Property in European Union

How to eSign a document: eSignature licitness for Assignment of intellectual property in European Union

hello i'm dr. jennifer davis and i'm a member of the center for intellectual property and information law at the Law Faculty of the University of Cambridge and I'm here to talk to you about the EU and intellectual property now intellectual property trademarks patents copyright designs and confidential information has often been called the product of the mind but generally it's embodied in physical objects a copyright work in a book a trademark on a piece of clothing now the intellectual property has been a major preoccupation of the EU for quite a period of time there are a couple of reasons for this intellectual property being abstract easily crosses national boundaries so that if I go to the EU I will find a can of coca-cola with the brand coca-cola on it everywhere in the EU even though perhaps it was bottled in only one member state the other reason why there is this preoccupation is precisely because II intellectual property crosses an international boundaries so easily so it's important for the EU to have a system to protect intellectual property which is uniform across the market since creating a single market it's one of its key goals so in the past few years trademark law has been harmonized across the whole of the EU it is possible to get an EU registered trademark and also an eu-registered design and there's an EU unregistered design there are a number of directives relating to copyright such as a directive which means that there's the same length of protection for copyright works all across the EU a european patent is soon to be introduced and recently a directive on trade secret was passed to ensure that all the european country EU countries give the same level of protection for trade secrets so what would happen if Britain Lee votes to leave the EU well possibly we could be like Norway and say within the European Economic Area that way we were continued to share in the laws relating to the protection of intellectual property in the European Union but of course we would have no say in how framed what happens if we leave completely well after a few years our intellectual property protection will begin to diverge from other member states now for some that would be a good thing and they would perhaps point to the over protection that they believe is given to intellectual property within the EU a prominent case for example is that of when L'Oreal the perfume company sued Bell yer also a purse perfume company for trademark infringement Bell yer was selling cheap smell alike perfumes which they described as tracer in one sense of smelling like trace or which was a registered trademark of L'Oreal the support of Justice of the European Union found that in fact Bell yer had infringe the trademark of L'Oreal by doing this because they said they had free written or had taken advantage of L'Oreal's investment in its mark but for its critics many of its critics in the UK what the decision had done was to have impinged upon freedom of speech after all L'Oreal was only valya sorry was only telling the truth about the smell of its perfume and also harmed consumers because they were not able to know the truth about a much cheaper perfume what about if we stay well those who believe that we should stay within the EU so it makes perfect sense that when you have an asset like intellectual property which so easily crosses international boundaries then it then you should have it makes sense to have a regime which covers and gives the same protection throughout this area of trading so if you're a startup company in the UK it will be cheap and easy for you to protect your trademark throughout the European Union and soon it will be the case with your patterns as well in the same way if you are a company in the United States perhaps or in Japan that wants to enter the EU market again it would be simple and easy for you to protect your trademark your registered design perhaps soon to be your patent in the European Union in a way that will enhance your ability to move between states and perhaps also benefit consumers because you can perhaps charge less for the product there is one final point worth making intellectual property is off obviously very valuable both for the UK and for the EU more generally yet in the past few months in the course of the debate none of the main protagonists either for staying or leaving the EU has felt it necessary to talk about the issue of intellectual property now I think that says something not perhaps about intellectual property in the EU but certainly about the standard of the debate