Revision of Italian IP code: university patents return to universities and digitisation continues
Introduction
The Italian Council of Ministers has approved a draft law to amend several provisions of the Industrial Property Code (CPI). The text is expected to be heard by Parliament shortly, where it could be approved in the Commission in deliberative session without the need for passages in the plenum of the Houses (which could postpone it to the next legislative session).
Some significant potential novelties concerning the administrative simplification and digitisation of procedures have to be pointed out. Even more significant – albeit in need of improvement – is the restitution to universities (both public and private) and other public research organisations of patrimonial rights to inventions made by their employees.
Much less impactful, however, is the rule on provisional protection for designs exhibited at “official or officially recognised” international trade fairs, which reinstates a rule deleted by the 2010 reform, and the correlative abolition of the ban on seizures at these fairs.
