The Laboratory is to Conduct Research for the Eurasian Economic Commission
At a meeting between senior figures at the Laboratory and the EEC Minister of Economics and Financial Policy, Timur Suleimenov, held on October 6, it was decided that an expert report should be drawn up on the selection of systems for the exhaustion of intellectual property rights.
The Laboratory Director, Alexey Ivanov, and the leading researcher, Ioannis Lianos, met Timur Suleimenov and the Deputy Director of the Department for the Development of Entrepreneurial Activity at the EEC, Samat Aliev, agreed to work together to study the impact of the principle of exhaustion on the economies of the EEC's member states.
The regional regime for the expiry of rights was strengthened by means of the Agreement on common principles for regulation in the field of safeguarding and protecting intellectual property rights, dated December 9, 2010, and the Agreement on the Eurasian Economic Union dated May 29, 2014. Its application in the future is provoking intense debate, however: it is a matter on which everyone seems to have a different opinion, and we are lacking a high-quality expert analysis of the situation. In such circumstances, it is difficult for the EEC to take rational, balanced decisions.
Under the agreements reached with Timur Suleimenov, the Laboratory is to draw up an expert report on the existing restrictions, under the rules imposed by the WTO, on the establishment of one or other principle for rights exhaustion in various sectors of the economy and for various product groups. Staff from the Laboratory have long been engaged in trying to solve the problem of selecting an exhaustion regime, a problem which is directly tied to the issue of parallel imports.
On October 16, at an assembly of the Consultative Committee on Intellectual Property under the Collegium of the EEC, Timur Suleimenov announced that a Working Group was to be set up to study and analyze the economic factors affecting the selection of a specific regime for the exhaustion of exclusive rights and, accordingly, turnover from foreign products - parallel import.
The Laboratory's analytical report will without doubt be a huge boost to the newly created Working Group.