In late December, the European Commission published a report on the protection and enforcement of intellectual property rights across the world.
China is listed as “the Priority 1 country,” in spite of the recent “substantive reform” of its administration responsible for IPR, because of the scale and persistence of IPR-related issues.
Ukraine is listed among “Priority 2” countries, alongside India, Indonesia, Russia and Turkey. According to the EC, these countries are affected by “serious systemic problems in the area of IP protection and enforcement, causing significant harm to EU businesses, with no progress or only limited progress in addressing these concerns compared to the previous year.”
Online piracy is one of the country issues pointed out in the report. This “remains a significant problem” as “the weaknesses of the current law have resulted in an increase in the number of pirate sites being hosted in Ukraine.”
Among other country issues are the following:
- The incompatibility of draft laws on patents with international standards and the European Patent Convention and the risk such legislation could “limit incentives to innovate;”
- The lack of protection of trademarks against bad faith registrations;
- “Serious problems” raised by the recent law on collective management organisations as regards copyright and related rights, especially in terms of the “definition of cable retransmission and tariff setting;”
- The fact that Ukrainian public broadcasting organisations “continue not to pay royalties to performers and phonogram producers for the use of their performances;”
- The inefficiency of regulatory data protection in the country.
