SIB announced that The European Commission has invited Italy to fully implement Directive 98/71 on the legal protection of designs, meaning that designs must have the protection of design and copyright laws.
SIB reminds that The Italian law implementing the Directive was changed several times, by reducing the transitional period from ten to five years, then by “extending it indefinitely within the limits of use prior to the entry into force of the law”. The European Commission declared the ten-year transitional period incompatible with European Union law in 2005, and in 2011 the Court of Justice of the European Union concluded that a ten-year transitional period is too long to be compatible with the European Union law.
In case of missing the deadline, the next step for Italy will be proceedings before the Court of Justice of the European Union.
