NATIONAL LAW IMPLEMENTING THE ENFORCEMENT DIRECTIVE
A. PRIMARY AND SECONDARY LAW
Based on Directive 2004/48/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 29 April 2004 (the “Enforcement Directive or IPRED”), the following national acts were amended:
– Industrial Property Act (IPA; Official Gazette, RS, No. 45/01)
– Copyright and Related Rights Act (“Copyright Act”, both acts together “IP Acts”, Official Gazette, RS, No. 09/01),
– Protection of Topographies of Integrated Circuits Act (Official Gazette, RS, No. 21/95).
B. TRANSPOSITION ISSUES
The legislator at the time of transposition of the Enforcement Directive believed the existing Slovenian IP legislation to be modern, to afford ample protection to the various rightholders and to work in harmony with other national acts, e.g. with the Obligations Code, Civil Procedure Act and Claim Enforcement and Security Act.
Slovenia managed to implement the Enforcement Directive in February 2006, some months before the time limit prescribed by the Enforcement Directive.
The most important amendments to the existing legislation included additional non-monetary claims for rightholders, such as recall of the goods from the market, new provisions on the right to obtain information and evidence from the infringer, and amended provisions regarding preliminary injunctions and preservation of evidence.
In practice, minor transposition issues accrued due to the fact that parts of the Enforcement Directive were just copied into Slovenian legislation without the necessary adjustment to the Slovenian legal system, and without appropriate amendments of Slovenian legislation other than the IP Acts. Some consistency and internal harmonisation of the Slovenian legislation was thus lost. For example, the preservation of evidence according to the Copyright Act and the IPA is governed by different procedural rules other than preservation of evidence according to the Civil Procedure Act (which is somewhat nonsensical). Another example is the transposition of provisions regarding the right to information, which was simply copied into the IP Acts without the necessary adaptation. Consequently, the Slovenian Courts have experienced difficulties in using these provisions in specific cases. However, through Court practice, which is infl uenced by the decisions rendered by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), these issues are slowly being resolved.
