Ceilings for IP enforcement: Proportionality and neutral position
Abstract
In L’Oreal SA v eBay International AG (C-324/09) the Court of Justice of the European Union held that an online service provider must be considered not to have taken a neutral position in a trade mark infringement if it provided assistance that entails, in particular, optimising the presentation of the offers for sale or promoting those offers between the customer-seller and potential buyers. The principle of proportionality provides an interesting approach to service neutrality and bring more certainty to the interpretation of the safe harbour provision, but it requires a multidisciplinary approach to IP law. A semiotic and economic analysis analysis of the trade mark holder’s vicarious liability has the potential to formalize that requirement as an alternative hermeneutic criterion to protect the interests of trade mark holders without any need to embrace any misappropriation doctrine that marginalizes the dialogical ability of citizens in the meaning-creating process of distinctive signs.
Presenter
Jesús Ivan Mora Gonzalez was awarded his PhD at in the University of Castilla-La Mancha in 2010. His thesis on "Criminal Enforcement of Trade Mark Exclusive Rights" developed a semiotic and economic analysis of distinctive signs with the aim of proposing an alternative paradigm for the criminal enforcement of trade mark exclusive rights in Spain. In 2011 he was granted a post-doctoral scholarship at the Centre for Intellectual Property Policy & Management, Bournemouth University, to research "New Forms of Innovation: the Distinctive Function of Authorship" (2011-2013). The objective of this project was to promote integrative narratives for the study of copyright in the European Union and to solve the deficiencies of an economic approach to fundamental concepts such as open innovation, rent dissipation, duplicative entry, non-exclusive appropriation, poly-vocal authorship or cultural dissent. In 2014 he was granted a research scholarship by the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition (Munich) to research "Intellectual Property Crime Harmonization and Cultural Democracy", on formalising a _de lege ferenda_ proposal delimiting the binding maximum level of trade mark protection in the European Single Market.
In 2016 he started as a Lecturer in Law at Valencian International University teaching Criminal Law, IP Law and English Law. In 2018, he joined the University of Granada. He currently works as a Lecturer in Law and is the Director of Legal English Courses for Lawyers in Melilla Campus.
Venue
Forgan Smith Building
UQ St Lucia