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European parliament adopts intellectual property action plan

Sara Moran

November 26, 2021

On 11 November, the European Parliament adopted a resolution on an intellectual property action plan aimed at supporting the EU’s recovery and resilience. The recitals note the importance of balanced protection and enforcement of intellectual property rights (IPR) to the European economy as well as to the EU’s recovery and resilience, in particular to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The plan follows the Commission's IP Action Plan adopted in November 2020, and addresses a number of strategies for the protection and enforcement of IPRs. Of particular interest in relation to copyright is paragraph 45 which provides that the European Parliament:

"Encourages the Member States to transpose the provisions of the Copyright Directive without delay and in a manner which reflects the agreement struck by the co-legislators to improve the protection it provides, and to allow exceptions such as access to online education and digitised cultural heritage; calls on the Commission to monitor buy-out contracts to ensure fair remuneration of creators based on copyright or authors’ rights; underlines that the lack of harmonisation of rules on authorship and copyright ownership can lead to divergent national solutions for AI-assisted works;"