Single Authorized State Authority for The Intellectual Property Protection in the Republic Of Croatia, Hungary and the Kingdom of Sweden: Legal Aspect

Abstract

Intellectual property protection is one of the phenomena that requires increased attention in the legal direction. Imperfect legislation leads to the complete absence or low indicators of innovation activity in every country, including the EU. In several EU countries (for example, the Republic of Croatia, Hungary and the Kingdom of Sweden) only one authority has been authorized to deal with such issues. In each of these EU countries an analysis of the national legislative framework is carried out, which determines the legal status of the authority: the State Intellectual Property Office of the Republic of Croatia, the Hungarian Intellectual Property Office and the Swedish Patent and Registration Office or the Swedish Intellectual Property Office in English. Their subordination and financing are examined. It is established that only the Hungarian Intellectual Property Office is self-financing. The result is exclusively supervision by the Minister of Culture and Innovation. Supervision is a passive action and, accordingly, conditional, because all relations between this minister and the authority take the form of stating facts. Tasks and powers provided for each authority in national legislation are analyzed. A comparative legal analysis of the tasks assigned to certain organisational divisions was conducted at the State Intellectual Property Office of the Republic of Croatia. Both positive (for example, double checking) and negative aspects (for example, assigning tasks that are not inherent to certain organisational divisions of this authority; the powers of the authority are in various legal acts and aren’t presented in the form of a single list) were identified. The tasks assigned to its organisational divisions were also analyzed in the Hungarian Intellectual Property Office. The result was that several organisational divisions of this authority specialize in the legal protection of intellectual property. In the author’s opinion, it is necessary to reorganize these divisions and their assigned tasks. However, the author’s recommendations aren’t included in the study, as the Hungarian Intellectual Property Office is self-financing. The legislation of the Kingdom of Sweden is in the process of formation in the analyzed direction, as a new model of legal status has been formed, where there are no rights or tasks, and only powers. It is not possible to identify the advantages and disadvantages of the new model, in the author’s opinion, because there is no reliable and complete statistical information on the Eurostat website. The author suggests that the Republic of Croatia and Hungary adopt the experience of the Kingdom of Sweden regarding the new model of legal status.