New starts: changes in Finland
A significant number of changes are currently taking place in the Finnish IP arena. An IP court is to be established at long last, and while the government is implementing the European directives on orphan works and the extended term of protection for sound recordings, the parliament is due to debate a crowd-sourced initiative to ‘reform’ the copyright law.
The Finnish government’s IP strategy, published in 2009, included a proposal to concentrate all civil IP disputes in the Market Court. A bill on extending the Market Court’s scope of authority was passed by the parliament in December 2012 and ratified by the president in January 2013.
As the new IP court the Market Court will have jurisdiction in all civil IP matters, including applications related to IP rights, such as applications for precautionary measures. It will also handle appeals against decisions by the National Board of Patents and Registration regarding patent, trademark and design registrations, and by the Finnish Communications Regulatory Authority regarding domain names.
Once the transfer of civil IP matters to the Market Court takes place, the Board of Appeals of the National Board of Patents and Registration will cease its operations, and the Helsinki District Court will lose its exclusive jurisdiction over civil trademark, patent and design matters.
Criminal proceedings involving industrial property rights will, however, continue to be heard in the Helsinki District Court, and criminal proceedings in copyright infringement cases will continue to be heard in local district courts.
What is the rationale for the new IP court?
In the run-up to making the Market Court into an IP court, a working group set up by the Ministry of Justice concluded that concentrating IP matters in one court would better ensure the required expertise and high quality decisions, and contribute to swift and secure enforcement of IP rights. These same arguments can also be found in the explanatory memorandum to the government bill adopted in December 2012.
The simultaneous increase in the value of IP rights and the growth of IP-based industries in general, the rapidly changing technological environment and the increasing complexity of IP-related litigation had put pressure on courts hearing IP cases.
It is, therefore, essential to provide to rights holders and users access to predictable and swift dispute resolution that also offers the best available legal expertise in the field.
On the policy level, it is hoped that a centralised court will ultimately assist Finnish companies to stay competitive in international markets and increase investment in IP. Similar measures have been taken elsewhere, and Finland wants to stay abreast of European and international developments.
Will the IP court be able to meet its stated objectives?
The IP court will start its operations on September 1, 2013, so there are no concrete examples or evidence as to its effectiveness or quality of its decisions yet.
There is little doubt, however, that the new structure will further improve the handling of IP matters in the Finnish courts. One change that will be of particular interest is the reduction of the number of appeals instances from two to one in civil cases.
Up to now, parties have been able to appeal from the district court to the appeals court and then possibly further to the Supreme Court. From now on, the Market Court’s decision in an IP dispute can only be appealed to the Supreme Court directly, if the Supreme Court grants leave to appeal. Only time will tell whether the trade-off between speed and legal certainty will produce the desired benefits.
Reforming or deforming copyright?
While the Finnish government is busy implementing the European directives on orphan works (2012/28/EU) and extended term of protection for sound recordings (2011/77/EU), and the Ministry of Education and Culture has initiated public consultations on national copyright policy, Internet activists, led by the Finnish Electronic Frontier Foundation (Effi), have started their own citizens’ initiative (https://www.kansalaisaloite.fi/fi/aloite/70) to reform Finnish copyright law.
