Over on our sister blog, IP Whiteboard, our colleagues Daniella Phair and Cate Nagy have considered the recommendations made in the Competition Policy Review Panel’s draft report on the effectiveness of Australia’s current competition policy and laws that relate to intellectual property.
As they note, given the impact of the intellectual property regime on innovation, trade and competition policy, IP and competition law really are complementary, both being directed towards improving economic welfare.
However, there is a fine line in IP policy between allowing authors and inventors to exploit and obtain a financial reward for their creativity and inventions (providing an incentive to innovate), and allowing information to be freely disseminated (which the draft report observes is more efficient).
In this context, Daniella and Cate consider the Panel’s recommendations in three key areas in respect of IP:
- an overarching review of IP laws should be conducted to ensure it remains “fit for purpose”;
- the current exemptions in the Competitoin and Consumer Act 2010 (Cth) for IP should be removed; and
- restrictions on parallel importing should be lifted.
Read their post on IP Whiteboard here.
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