The New European Commission and its Work Plan for EU Intellectual Property

Abstract

The year 2014 sees major changes in the composition of two of the institutions that govern the European Union (EU); namely the European Parliament, elections for which were held earlier in the year, and the European Commission, whose members are nominated by Member States but must be approved by the Parliament, which takes office in November, and the new composition and structure of which was announced in September. The latter not only initiates EU legislation, and supervises the bodies that manage unitary EU intellectual property rights, most notably the Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market (shortly to be renamed the EU Trade Marks and Designs Agency) but is also responsible for enforcing the EU Treaties. This makes it timely to review the status of the Commission’s recent and pending initiatives in the field of intellectual property, not only in terms of specific legislative initiatives, many of which, in so far as they are already under way, have been the subject of previous articles in this series, but also in its ongoing program of review and of policy making, much of which is not immediately, or may never be, reflected in specific legislation.