Past Event

Protection of knowledge in the shipbuilding industry

Workshop on Intellectual Property Rights

March 26, 2010
Le Royal Meridien Hotel
Hamburg, Germany

http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/sectors ...

4th Erika Package a stringent necessity for Europe’s marine equipment industry

The European Commission awarded a contract to conduct a Shipbuilding IPR Study to Houthoff Buruma and Policy Research Corporation in 2007. CESA and EMEC - the European umbrella organisations for the shipbuilding and the marine equipment industry played an important role in providing the Commission with their comprehensive input illustrating the damage the industry has been suffering from insufficient protection of knowledge in the shipbuilding and particularly in the marine equipment industry.

Since the presentation of the Study in 2008, Directorate General Enterprise has been arranging for several events which more and more gave a proof of the necessity to support the industry’s own defence measures with an adequate legal framework as part of a 4th Erika package!

The IPR workshop in Rotterdam on the 3rd and 4th of February 2010 already highlighted some significant deficiencies in the European legislation for the protection of intellectual properties, to mention only Article 5ter of the Paris Convention. Hamburg, however, has set the breakthrough for a consensus shared by the majority of the attendees that intellectual assets like know how, know why, processes, logistics etc. deserve also some kind of a legal protection as innovation and state of the art technologies are key elements of Europe’s technological leadership.

All that under the assumption that self-destructing liberal influences in the Commission have definitely abandoned their vision of a de-industrialised Europe in the wake of the IT and subprime bubbles’ burst.

Article 5ter Paris Convention

Counterfeited marine equipment forming an integral part of a ship should be traced, tracked, detected, confiscated and destroyed in full compliance with a law which will have to be newly established by the European Commission (e.g. a directive) or simply an amendment to Article 5ter of the Paris Convention.

Authentication of products

The time has come for European marine equipment manufacturers to think about securing their products over the entire supply chain making use state of the art authentication methods. Sophisticated technologies are available.
Organized crime and counterfeiters are brutally attacking European marine equipment on a large scale. It is for sure that the true extent of the fact that counterfeit products accompanied by counterfeit certificates will be pouring into the Internal Market in the near future is far greater than currently realized by the industry.

Authentication of certificates

The safety of shipping is based significantly on the security of its sensitive documents!
Counterfeit products are quite often accompanied by counterfeit certificates. Both - copied products and copied certificates pose a threat to safety and security. If Classification Societies claim to be the custodians of safety and security in shipping, they should be obliged to authenticate their certificates in a similar way that central banks are securing their currency.

Recall of products from the market

If a product - regardless whether it is an original or a copy - has verifiably failed and caused an accident and/or casualty, all other products featuring the same deficiencies should be recalled from the market similar to what is common practice in the automotive and aerospace industry.

Tracing and tracking

The European Union and customs authorities have introduced a broad spectrum of nomenclatures and data bases, accomplished by barcoding standards and the industry’s tagging systems. Member States, Commission, World Customs Organisation and the marine equipment industry should accept the challenge of integrating authentication criteria into a single nomenclature for commodity description, coding of customs tariffs, statistical purposes and authentication in the context of tracking and tracing.

Auditorium

Wolfgang Hehn, European Commission DG Enterprise
Jing Shen, CESA
Paola Lancellotti, EMEC
Mark Wiesner, VDMA
Stephan Assheuer, Germanischer Lloyd

Axel Freiherr von dem Bussche, Taylor Wessing
Nicole Lübberstedt, becker marine systems
Pierre Berseneff, STX Europe (France)
Rolf Nagel, Flensburger Schiffbau
Gerd Glaeseker, Karg & Petersen