Romania Project
Introduction
PETOŠEVIĆ Romania Project was part of European Union’s PHARE program, which was a financial aid program for the EU candidate countries of Central and Eastern Europe. The project's objective was to upgrade and harmonize intellectual property rights in Romania and to strengthen implementing authorities responsible for intellectual and industrial property protection.
The ultimate goal of the project was to fulfill all requirements related to intellectual and industrial property development in order for Romania to become EU member state in 2007. It was deemed that a proper and strong system of intellectual property rights protection would have a decisive impact both on the stability and the growth of the business environment in this country.
PETOŠEVIĆ team working on the activities in Romania consisted of Slobodan Petošević, Loïc Dufour and Ignacio Lázaro.
Activities Undertaken
PETOŠEVIĆ activities in Romania, among other things, encompassed the following:
Drafting proposals for harmonizing and upgrading patent and patent instrument registration systems and other related provisions like know-how and technology transfer.
Confirming the level of harmonization of plant variety registration system and related provisions. The overall objective of this sub-module was to verify the level of harmonization of plant variety registration system and related provisions under the current Romanian law. In accordance with the terms of reference the following activities are being undertaken for this sub-module:
- Study the present Romanian relevant legislation to check the existing level of compliance with the EU directives in the field.
- Write a report on present level of harmonization of the relevant Romanian laws and regulations in the field.
- Write an exhaustive proposal for upgrading the relevant Romanian patent legislation, with the Romanian counterparts, if necessary.
Until recently, Romania was an extension state for the EPO and became a full member in 2003. Romania is also a member of the WIPO. As such, when evaluating the level of compliance of the Romanian plant variety registration legislation, PETOŠEVIĆ IP experts consider the following:
- EU directives and provisions for intellectual and industrial property rights.
- Provisions of Romania's participation in WIPO.
- Training of PTO Staff, Lawyers and Professional Representatives before PTO Staff in Romania.
- Information of all stakeholders about terminology issues in intellectual property matters.
In order to increase business community awareness, PETOŠEVIĆ also worked on dissemination of information in Romania related to intellectual and industrial property matters. To this end, PETOŠEVIĆ was involved in the following:
- Creation of an intellectual and industrial property case law bulletin.
- Enhancement to IP documents access by creating or enlarging the existing documentation center.
- Supervise compilation of IP terms and idioms. Use existing compilations as a basis and determine if there is already a compilation of these terms in Romanian. Determine if a compilation of IP terms was already published in Romania and in surrounding countries.
- Prepare a leaflet giving the translation and the meaning of each term or idiom in English, French and Romanian.