Chapter 7 – Intellectual property law

What is being negotiated?

Let’s imagine for a moment a world without intellectual property. Have you thought about how everything would work without intellectual property area? Can you imagine a world without books, music, architectural scenes of different design, communication mechanisms, your computer, television, air conditioning? Everything you see today, was once an idea, and today is a reality. The future is launching some new streams and we are here to tackle them. It’s not that simple or easy, but when each of us individually points to one of the challenges, then things change. Today, we have robots, cutting-edge software that aims to make things easier for people, cars, blogs, vlogs, social networks where people share their thoughts. Is it OK to, in this era of the internet take someone’s work and present it as your own? Is it okay to “alienate” someone’s idea and take it is your own? The task is to establish the rules for the intellectual property field that must be followed. More specifically, intellectual property is the right of “ownership” over individual creations. Although intangible in physical terms, it has all the characteristics of a property. It can be bought, sold, licensed, exchanged, donated, inherited like any other property, and Montenegro is working to clearly define the boundaries of permitted and conscientious conducting in this area.

Sub-areas?

The acquis communautaire in the field of Intellectual Property Law covers the issue of copyright and related rights, industrial property rights and provisions for their implementation.

Copyright and related rights protect works in the fields of literature, science and arts, while industrial property means rights to a patent, trademark, industrial design, designations of geographical origin and geographical indications and topographies of semiconductors.

Intellectual property rights are set out in Article 27 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which emphasizes the right to protect creativity. The greatest civilizations are the first international treaties in the field of intellectual property, the Paris

Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property 1883 and the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works 1886. The Principality of Montenegro was a member of the Berne and Paris Convention as the oldest international sources of law since 1 July 1893. The Constitution of Montenegro in Articles 76 and 77 guarantees the protection of intellectual creativity.

When was the chapter open?

The chapter on Intellectual Property Rights was officially opened on March 31, 2014.

Closing benchmarks?

1. Montenegro completes all necessary legislative amendments to ensure Community exhaustion of rights in all areas from the date of accession.

2. Montenegro adopts amendments to the Law on Copyright and Related Rights to complete alignment with the acquis.

3. Montenegro adopts the new Law on Patents to complete alignment with the acquis, particularly on supplementary protection certificates.

4. Montenegro ensures a sufficient administrative capacity to register and enforce intellectual property rights and provides a track record of investigation, prosecutions, and judicial treatment of violations.

What are the activities in the coming period?

According to the European Commission Report for 2019, Montenegro has a good level of preparedness in the field of intellectual property rights. Good progress has been made in integrating IT instruments for industrial property rights, as well as in the coordination of the bodies involved, joint operations and reporting.

Montenegro will in the forthcoming period in line with the recommendations received, continue to work on preparing and adopting the new National Intellectual Property Strategy, aligning with the acquis communautaire in terms of the collective exercise of copyright and related rights and measures to improve the balance of investigations, prosecution and judicial epilogue.

In the forthcoming period, the challenges for Montenegro are mostly related to intensifying the awareness raising of intellectual property among citizens and public administration reform so that in the future it is adequately prepared for all challenges in this area, which is at the same time very important for the European perspective of Montenegro.

Institutions / organizations participating in the negotiation group?

The members of the Working Group for this chapter are representatives of the Ministry of Economy, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, Ministry of Science, Office for European Integration, Police Directorate, Customs Administration, Market Inspectorate, Agency for Medicines and Medical Devices, Commercial Court, Prosecutor’s Office of Montenegro, of the Parliamentary Committee for Education, Science, Culture and Sports, Chambers of Commerce of Montenegro, Bar Association of Montenegro, NGO Forum of Prosperity and NGO of the Organization for the Protection of the Rights of Music Authors of Montenegro.

What is the benefit to Montenegro of this chapter?

The benefit of an adequately regulated area of intellectual property in Montenegro is that all interested parties will be able to create their works without fear of being harmed in any way. This is very important, not only for citizens of Montenegro, but also citizens from other countries of the world. Adequate protection of intellectual property is a key prerequisite for any economic and other development of a country and a statement of Montenegro’s commitment to EU accession.

Chapter 7 - Working Group

Biljana Jakić

Negotiatior

Valentina Radulović

Head of the WG

Vanja Banović

Secretary of the WG

The Working Group was formed in September 2012. The negotiator for this chapter is Biljana Jakic, Director General of the Directorate for Internal Market and Competition at the Ministry of Economy, and the Head of the Working Group is Valentina Radulovic Scepanovic, Director of the Intellectual Property Office. Contact person for the working group is Vanja Banovic from the European Integration Office.

The working group consists of 21 members (16 from state institutions and 5 from the civil sector).

Intellectual property includes copyright and related rights, and industrial property rights. It allows the holders of these rights to protect their products and services from unauthorized copying, use and forgery, or to manage those rights as their property.