Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-12-11-Speech-2-413"
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"en.20071211.42.2-413"2
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Madam President, as the rapporteur Mr Lehne mentioned, this issue has concerned the House for 17 years. I have had the privilege of following it from the very beginning, since I worked as rapporteur for the Committee on Legal Affairs on the Directive on industrial designs and models. I was subsequently draftsman of the opinion of the Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection on the same issue, and have also followed its progress as the representative of the Socialist Group on the Committee on Legal Affairs.
In any case, I feel the fact that we have been discussing this matter between the Council and the Commission for 17 years is no bad thing, because there is a general tendency to use the legislative instrument to solve occasional problems, and here the two co-legislators, the Council and Parliament, have been working for some time now to find a balanced solution, a solution that acknowledges the right to protection of intellectual property, the interests of car manufacturers, the interests of consumers and also – why not? – the interests of small repair outlets or even insurance companies.
I feel the formula proposed here by the rapporteur is the proper solution. As I have already said, the only item to be determined – and we will learn this through the results – is the right period of time. I think, however, that, under these circumstances, Parliament is giving the Commission the chance to draw up a new legal formula within a short space of time, a legal formula that would save us the customary recourse to the Court of Justice for matters relating to litigation.
I therefore feel that Parliament should basically adopt the report, without prejudice to any minor difficulties that might be posed by certain amendments.
I wish to start by congratulating Mr Lehne on his balanced approach. I feel he has given a magnificent account of the difficulties involved. This is no easy subject, not simple at all; it has both legal complications and economic consequences.
I agree with him. I recall the long night of discussions with the Council on the Conciliation Committee as to the final formula – at that time we were considering the possibility of some kind of compulsory licence, although this was rejected – but I think that both the rapporteur and myself, and also Mr Klinz, who spoke before me, are in favour of defending intellectual property rights.
From the legal standpoint, however, the problem in relation to models and to industrial designs in general lies in the fact that the protection we have to give is for the product as a whole. The most important feature is the aesthetic value of the product overall, in other words the design, and the case arising most frequently is car design.
Repair parts, in other words, parts which have broken or come loose after an accident or for any other reason, have to be replaced and, as Commissioner McCreevy said, the normal format is a part equivalent to the part replaced. When someone repairs a part and replaces it with an identical part, with no prejudice to the overall design, obviously this person is not committing any kind of plagiarism, but merely carrying out repairs to an object that it must fit. This is the famous ‘must fit/must match’ concept.
I feel the formula suggested by the rapporteur is the proper solution, but he has also addressed another issue: there is, of course, another aspect, which is the economic side of the matter. In other words, at present there are a number of countries where the car industry needs this additional income generated by intellectual property rights. As the Commissioner said, however, in order to secure the internal market we must unify the law within the entire European Union, and the crux of the matter is how to reconcile one thing with another.
The only way to do this is by means of a transitional period. This means we must give the industry the chance to make preparations over a long period of time in order to take account of the compensating extra income from property rights on ready-made parts, a concept which makes no sense at the present time since we operate on the basis that property refers to the design as a whole.
The main issue is this period, as Mr Lehne stated. Some feel the period should be five years – two plus three, we might say – while others think it ought to be longer, a period of eight years.
Tomorrow we will find out the positions of all the political groups, and also the various national delegations and individual Members. It occurs to me that this is an issue which will not be discussed along the lines of political parties but rather in accordance with national preferences, individual preferences, or protection preferences by sectors."@en1
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