March 18, 2022
At the end of February 2022, the mentioned new laws have entered into force, having been published in the Intellectual property Gazette on February 4 – 5, 2022.
We can highlight several important amendments pursuant to the new Laws.
According to the amendments, the main changes concern enforcement:
– the time frame to file an appeal against the local IPO decision changed from 15 days to 30 days from the date of receipt of the decision.
– the time frames for initiating proceedings before the Court (such as claims for damages, infringement claims, claims for seizure and destruction of goods) have been defined as – “within three years from the date the holder became aware of the infringement, and no later than five years from the date of the infringement.”
– In certain cases of infringement, instead of applying the measures the Court has the ability to order the monetary compensation for the injured party, if there was no negligence, if the execution of the measures in question would cause disproportionate harm and if the monetary compensation to the injured party would be reasonably satisfactory.
When determining the amount of damages, the Court will take into account all relevant aspects such as adverse economic consequences, including lost profits incurred by the injured party, any unjust profit of the infringer and, where appropriate, other elements such as economic factors and the moral prejudice caused to the right holder.
Most importantly, the new Law on Patents finally enables “SPC” – supplementary protection certificates – under the new law, the SPC protection is no longer delayed until Kosovo’s EU membership.
The SPC clauses (especially Article 93) now includes details regarding the SPC subject matter and effect of protection.
It remains to be seen how the application of SPCs will be conducted in practice.
