European Observatory on infringements of intellectual property rights holds annual meeting in Sofia

On 21 and 22 February 2018 in Sofia, under the auspices of the Bulgarian Presidency of the Council of the EU, the European Observatory on infringements of intellectual property (IP) rights held a meeting with public sector representatives from the EU Member States. The event followed the conference “IP in Education”, which was held on 20 February 2018. Host of the conference was the Bulgarian Patent Office, in partnership with the European Observatory on infringements of IP Rights.

At the meeting, the Observatory presented its annual activity report for 2017 and the updates on the Observatory activities, including the latest main results achieved, the status of the ongoing work, new initiatives and good practices of the EU Member States in this field.

The Director of the Observatory Mr Paul Maier and the President of the Bulgarian Patent Office Dr Petko Nikolov addressed the participants with welcome speeches. Dr Nikolov indicated that the trust in the work of the public sector needs to be restored. On the one hand this means integrating good practices, high quality services and innovation in the public sector, but also fighting problems like the low respect for the rule of law. A study on trade in counterfeit goods published jointly by EUIPO and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in 2016 was presented during the meeting. The study shows that international trade in counterfeit products represents up to 5 % of EU imports from the rest of the world.