Jens Schovsbo

University of Copenhagen · Centre for Information and Innovation Law (CIIR)

It is the starting point in some jurisdictions that if a licensing agreement has been breached, the licensor may choose to establish their claims against the licensee on the basis of either contract or intellectual property law. This article argues that such a starting point should not be upheld. Not least because of developments in EU law, the int...

With interdisciplinary chapters written by lawyers, sociologists, doctors and biobank practitioners, Global Genes, Local Concerns identifies and discusses the most pressing issues in contemporary biobanking. Addressing pressing questions such as how do national biobanks best contribute to translational research and how could academic and industrial...

Do donors (of samples from which genetic information is derived) have some sort of pre-legal (moral) or legal property right to that information? In this paper, we address this question from both a moral philosophical and a legal point of view. We argue that philosophical theories about property do not seem to support a positive answer: We have not...

Most university biobanks begin like other university research projects, that is, with an idea conceived by an individual researcher in pursuit of his/her own research interests, publications, funding, and career. Some biobanks, however, come to have scientific value that goes beyond the projects that were initially responsible for the collection of...

Most university biobanks begin like other university research projects, i.e. with an idea conceived by an individual researcher in pursuit of his/her own research interests, publications, funding and career. Some biobanks, however, come to have scientific value that goes beyond the projects that were initially responsible for the collection of the...

Despite an avalanche of recent court decisions on the European system for supplementary protection certificates (SPCs), the issue of third-party SPC applications — also known as ‘SPC squatting’ — has never been sufficiently clarified. Considering the ambiguous stipulations in the SPC Regulations, as well as the practical and theoretical significan...

This chapter considers the implications for EU design law of 3D-printing. It first describes the 3D-printing technology and the e-ecosystem which is evolving around the technology and involves a number of new stakeholders who in different ways are engaged in the making and sharing of CAD-files and/or printing. It is submitted that it is only a matt...

The Nordic design laws, which were enacted in the 1970s, may be viewed as a forerunner for the EU system. This article sets the scene for the evolution of the Nordic Design Acts. Furthermore, it examines case law and registration practices to test how functional designs were de facto protected by the Design Act considering also the development in c...

Traditionally copyright has been exploited in separate geographical markets. This practice restricts the ability of users to access online services, music, movies and sports events on their electronic devices wherever they are in Europe and regardless of borders, viz. so called ‘portability’. This contribution describes the complex legal background...

This article first describes how a 'constitutionalization' of Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) has taken place in the case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union. It then reflects on the impact of this development. It is argued that the full effect of the constitutionlization will manifest itself in the years to come but that the proce...

Whatever the protection afforded to trade marks, it must always be balanced against general interests, in particular the fundamental freedom of expression and the guarantee of undistorted competition. Taking this insight as a starting point, members of the academic community have summarized main findings of research concerning the reconciliation of...

Upon its entry into force, the EU “patent package”The EU “patent package” consists of the Agreement of 19 February 2013 on the Unified Patent Court (UPCA); Regulation (EU) No. 1257/2012 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 17 December 2012 implementing enhanced cooperation in the area of the creation of unitary patent protection; and Co...

This perspective-article provides an overview on selected legal aspects of biobanking. It discusses these issues with a focus on public biobanks in a university setting and the specific challenges posed by personalized medicine (PM). We conclude that any decisions as to the design of the regulatory environment should follow a process that takes acc...

This perspective article provides an overview on selected legal aspects of biobanking. It discusses these issues with a focus on public biobanks in a university setting and the specific challenges posed by personalized medicine. We conclude that any decisions as to the design of the regulatory environment should follow a process that takes account...

The new common judiciary for European patents (UPC) will play a crucial role in the future European patent system. The UPC will be a very specialised court that i.a. recruits judges from specialists’ circles and has as part of its mission to develop a coherent and autonomous body of case law. The article points out that the UPC because of this desi...

Whatever the protection afforded to trade marks, it must always be balanced against general interests, in particular the fundamental freedom of expression and the guarantee of undistorted competition, as reflected in the Lisbon Treaty, the Charter of Fundamental Rights and the European Convention on Human Rights. The need for an appropriate balance...

This article evaluates the different mechanisms that nations use to limit trade mark rights to promote competition, free speech, and other public interests. It shows how EU and US trade mark laws seem to be converging towards a similar model which includes both (1) specific statutory defenses to trade mark violations and (2) trade mark doctrines wh...

Clement Salung Petersen is an Associate Professor and Thomas Riis and Jens Schovsbo are Professors all in the Centre for Information and Innovation Law, University of Copenhagen. Today, consumers in the EU are able to purchase counterfeit and pirated goods directly from sellers in non-EU member states (e.g. in Asia) that send the goods in small con...

The paper discusses ways to construct a more efficient and balanced European patent system. It identifies and describes challenges relating to innovation, to non-economic issues and to governance. In order to improve the patent system, a cautious approach of “Muddling through” is recommended. More concretely, the paper puts forward some of the solu...

This article describes and discusses the effects of collective rights administration of (individual) copyright. It points out that collectivization is driven either by en economic argument relating to the reduction of transaction costs or a cultural one relating to the protection of authors. It then claims that collectivization has the potential to...

On 4 December 2009, the European Council unanimously adopted conclusions on an enhanced patent system in Europe, which inter alia intends to establish a new EU patent as well as a new common patent judiciary – the European and European Union Patent Court (EEUPC). The EEUPC will constitute a new sui generis, transnational court system with exclusive...

This article discusses whether or not Common Principles exist in EU law regarding exhaustion of rights (“first sale”). Traditionally, the law of the EU-countries conceptualized exhaustion in two different ways: Either “Contract” (e.g. UK law) or “Principle of exhaustion” (e.g. German law). Whereas, the first model left much to the parties - e.g. to...

An extended collective license is a legal model whereby the binding effect of a collective agreement between an organization of copyright holders and a user of copyrightable works is extended to right holders who are not members of the organization. Such models have been used for rights clearance in the Nordic countries since the early 1960s. Exten...

“Intellectual property“ has become the international household term denoting the rights addressed in Part II of the TRIPS Agreement. The term suggests that such rights grant their proprietor an entitlement to exclude others from using the protected subject matter. However, in reality, intellectual property has never been exclusive in a strict sense...

This paper builds on the recommendation in the Scientific and Technological Options Assessment report for the European Parliament to improve the European patent system to ‘increase access to patented inventions’. The paper first provides some background information on the patent system and the limitations on access to protected technology from ‘thi...

Since 1955, the professor's privilege had allowed Danish professors to retain intellectual property rights (IPRs) over the results of their research. This changed in 2000, when Denmark, the first of several countries to do so, abolished the professor's privilege and granted IPRs over research results to universities. In this paper we show that in t...

The paper points out the relevance of competition law to international issues of Intellectual Property Law (IPR) and demonstrates how competition law internationally has come to function as an indispensable instrument to balance IPR. The perspective is international and focused on TRIPS. The rules in TRIPS which define the obligations of member sta...

Until recently consumers and consumer-interests have been virtually absent not only from the rules of copyright but also from copyright’s discourse. This has been so even though the combination of an expansion of copyright and a devaluation of the internal balancing mechanisms raise concern from a consumer perspective. There would, therefore, seem...

The present report is based on an independent, policy-oriented investigation of the current European patent system. The central premise of the report is that the patent system has so far been a positive factor in promoting innovation and the diffusion of knowledge, and thus that the system is contributing in a constructive way to economic and socia...

On 14 June 2007, the report "Policy Options for the Improvement of the European Patent System" was presented and discussed at a workshop in the European Parliament. The report was commissioned by STOA (the Scientific Technology Options Assessment body of the European Parliament), coordinated by ETAG (European Technology Assessment Group) and prepar...

Rapporten er skrevet af Christian Friis Bach med tekstbidrag fra en række af gruppens medlemmer og på baggrund af arbejdsgruppens drøftelser og kommentarer på en række møder i Teknologirådet, hvor artik- ler og rapporter om patentsystemet er blevet gennemgået, og oplægsholdere med forskellig ekspertise har været indbudt til at dele deres viden med...