EUCD Review

Professor Bernt Hugenholtz is to lead the planned review of the EU Copyright and Related Rights Directive of 2001, with a wider remit than originally intended. Hugenholtz is Professor of Intellectual Property Law and Director of the Institute for Information Law of the University of Amsterdam (IViR). He also chairs the Intellectual Property Task Force of the Legal Advisory Board of the European Commission.

According to Michelle Childs,

" Originally it was to be a review only of implementation, but now it will be an evaluation review of the Directive i.e an evaluation of whether or not has it achieved its policy objectives. This is an important change. The most recent evaluation report from DG Internal Market, on the Database Directive, was the first evaluation of an IP right based on evidence rather than rhetoric. It found that granting increased rights to database owners had not achieved its policy aims of increasing EU competitiveness against the US, in fact the reverse...

Initial signs are encouraging, as the terms of the tender for the initial evaluation are broad: the study must include a review of the contribution of copyright to knowledge economy, the role of consumers, the way Member States have transposed exceptions and limitations in the Directive into national legislation ( an increasingly controversial issue as the current disputes in France over their implementation of the Copyright Directive show .) It will also look at technical protecion measures (TPMs) and generally any difficulties that arise for right holders, commercial users, consumers ,scientific and academic users and libraries."