FINLAND
A signifi cant number of changes are currently taking place in the Finnish IP arena. An IP court is to be established at long last, and while the government is implementing the European directives on orphan works and the extended term of protection for sound recordings, the parliament is due to debate a crowd-sourced initiative to ‘reform’ the copyright law.
T e Finnish government’s IP strategy, published in 2009, included a proposal to concentrate all civil IP disputes in the Market Court. A bill on extending the Market Court’s scope of authority was passed by the parliament in December 2012 and ratifi ed by the president in January 2013.
As the new IP court the Market Court will have jurisdiction in all civil IP matters, including applications related to IP rights, such as applications for precautionary measures. It will also handle appeals against decisions by the National Board of Patents and Registration regarding patent, trademark and design registrations, and by the Finnish Communications Regulatory Authority regarding domain names.
Once the transfer of civil IP matters to the Market Court takes place, the Board of Appeals of the National Board of Patents and Registration will cease its operations, and the Helsinki District Court will lose its exclusive jurisdiction over civil trademark, patent and design matters. Criminal proceedings involving industrial property rights will, however, continue to be heard in the Helsinki District Court, and criminal proceedings in copyright infringement cases will continue to be heard in local district courts.
What is the rationale for the new IP court?
In the run-up to making the Market Court into an IP court, a working group set up by the Ministry of Justice concluded that concentrating IP matters in one court would better ensure the required expertise and high quality decisions, and contribute to swiſt and secure enforcement of IP rights. T ese same arguments can also be found in the explanatory memorandum to the government bill adopted in December 2012.
T e simultaneous increase in the value of IP rights and the growth of IP-based industries in general,
the rapidly changing technological
environment and the increasing complexity of IP-related litigation had put pressure on courts hearing IP cases. It is, therefore, essential to provide to rights holders and users access to predictable and swiſt dispute resolution that also off ers the best available legal expertise in the fi eld.
www.worldipreview.com World Intellectual Property Review September/October 2013 141
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