The Study Of EU’s Civil Enforcement Of Intellectual Property Rights

With the deepening of economic globalization, the intellectual property whoseprotection has become an important rule of the era of globalization has become animportant means for countries to enhance their competitiveness. Taking TRIPS(Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights) as a turningpoint, the focus of international community’s consideration gradually shifted from thereform of substantive rules to the reform of enforcement of intellectual property rights.Civil enforcement includes civil procedures and civil remedies which are with thewidest scope and highest frequency in judicial protection and relief of intellectualproperty rights, so that EU has never stopped its high aspirations towards them. In onehand, the EU is committed to strengthen its own institutions by implementing theDirective2004/48/EC (the European Parliament and the Council of29April2004onthe Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights) with TRIPS-plus properties at EUlevel aiming at the harmonization of national level of civil enforcement of intellectualproperty. On the other hand, internationally, EU and other developed economies aretrying to seek development outside the multilateral system under the WTO framework.Under this context, ACTA (the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement) together withmore and more bilateral and regional FTA (Free Trade Agreements) came into beingincorporating much stricter TRIPS-plus rules of civil enforcement of intellectualproperty rights. Thus, the study of EU civil enforcement system which is legallybased on the TRIPS Agreement and the Directive2004/48/EC and the study of EUcivil enforcement trends which are clued by ACTA and the Directive2004/48/EC areof great significance for China’s business strategy and government decision-making.