EU Symposiums on Intellectual Property Rights

The EU Advisory Group organizes three Symposiums on Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) on 23-25 November 2011 in Regina Hotel, Yerevan. The Symposiums gather a number of key IPR stakeholders including judges, prosecutors and police officers, with the aim to facilitate dialogue and awareness-raising on the on-going reforms in the field of IPR.

Armenia needs to implement a number of reforms related to Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) as a precondition to start and complete the Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Agreement (DCFTA) negotiations with the European Union. Overall, Armenia has not yet fulfilled its commitments to provide a protection of IPR-s at the level similar to that of the EU. The major challenge lies in problematic implementation and weak IPR enforcement resulting in a high degree of counterfeiting and piracy activities.

Yet progress has been achieved through the reform of the Armenian IPR legislation, the creation of an Observatory on counterfeiting and piracy, as well as the approval of a national IPR strategy and cooperation between the police and private stakeholders. Currently, priority reforms focus on external border enforcement and improvement of criminal and civil procedures.

The role of the Armenian Courts and Police Department is hence of utmost importance to achieve the desired IPR reform.

The Symposiums are opened by Mr. Onno Simons, Acting Head of the EU Delegation to Armenia, Mr. Aram Orbelyan, Deputy Minister of Justice and Mr. Grigor Sargsyan, Director of the School of Prosecutors and Mr. Artak Harutyunyan, Head of Organizational and Oversight Department, Office of RA General Prosecutor and Mr. Aram Orbelyan, RA Deputy Minister of Justice.