NATIONAL LAW IMPLEMENTING THE ENFORCEMENT DIRECTIVE
A. PRIMARY AND SECONDARY LAW
Directive 2004/48/EC of 29 April 2004 on the enforcement of intellectual property rights (the “Enforcement Directive”) was implemented on 1 May 2007 when the Enforcement Directive Implementation Act of 8 March 20071 came into force. The following acts were amended:
– a new title 15 with Articles 1019 to 1019i was added to book 3 of the Dutch Code of Civil Procedure. These provisions concern the major body of the implementation;
– new Articles 26d and 26e are added to the Copyright Act (Auteurswet) and several provisions were amended;
– new Articles 1a, 15e and 15f were added to the Neighbouring Rights Act (Wet op de naburige rechten) and several provisions were amended;
– new Articles 1a, 5d and 5e were added to the Database Act (Databankenwet) and several provisions were amended;
– Articles 6a and 6b were added to the Trade Name Act (Handelsnaamwet);
– a new Articles 18a, was added to the Topographies of Semiconductor Products Act (Wet houdende regelen inzake de bescherming van oorspronkelijke topografieën van halfgeleiderprodukten) and several provisions were amended;
– two provisions of the Plant Variety Act (Zaaizaad- en Plantgoedwet 2005) and several provisions were amended; and
– Article 13a was added to the Agricultural Quality Act (Landbouwkwaliteitswet) and the fi rst Article was amended to provide the necessary defi nitions to offer protection to designations of origin and geographical indications.
B. TRANSPOSITION ISSUES
According to Article 20 of the Enforcement Directive, national legalisation complying with the Enforcement Directive should have been enacted no later than 29 April 2006. The Dutch legislator did not meet this date and the implementation of the act only entered into force on 1 May 2007. According to Article IX of the Enforcement Directive Implementation Act, it does not apply in cases which were started on or before 1 May 2007. For all other matters, the Act had immediate effect.
The transitional law notwithstanding, in most cases, the lower courts had already interpreted the Code of Civil Procedure in accordance with the Enforcement Directive, more notably with respect to Article 14 which requires that reasonable and proportionate legal costs and other expenses incurred by the successful party shall, as a general rule, be borne by the unsuccessful party in the period between 29 April 2006 and 1 May 2017.