This volume publishes the contributions to a symposium held at the Institut für Integrationsforschung of the Europa-Kolleg Hamburg on June 20, 2003, which was devoted to the protection of industrial property rights in the European Internal Market. The protection of intellectual property, in particular through industrial property rights, is of fundamental importance for the functioning of the internal market.
The guarantee of this protection is in principle the responsibility of the law of the Member States. However, both the legal differences between the Member States and the territorial limits of the protection rights are in tension with the freedom of movement of goods and services. The Community has long tried to overcome this tension between the Community’s integration objective and the protection of intellectual property through the case law of the European Court of Justice and through legislative acts of the Community institutions aimed at harmonizing or unifying the law.
More recently, the Community has taken new initiatives to push the development further. The articles published here provide a comprehensive overview of the status and perspectives of industrial property protection in Europe.
