Maurizio Borghi and Marcella Favale presented: ‘Harmonization of Intellectual Property Rights within and beyond the European Union: The Acquis Communautaire in the Framework of the European Neighbourhood Policy’ at the SEARCH Project, Final Academic Conference 10-11 February 2014, Barcelona. The paper reviews the free-trade agreements between the EU and neighbouring countries (NCs), with a view of determining the effect of these Agreements and the relevant Action Plans on IPRs harmonization. It concludes that excessive focus on IPRs enforcement leads to bad implementation and poor approximation of laws. Moreover, it argues for experimenting the extensions of Community exhaustion of IPRs to selected contracting NCs.

The SEARCH Working Paper ‘Harmonization of intellectual property rights within and beyond the European Union: The acquis communautaire in the framework of the European Neighbourhood Policy’ by Marcella Favale and Maurizio Borghi, together with relevant policy brief and press release, is available from the Working Paper collection of the SEARCH website (WP5 25).