THE ISSUE OF OWNERSHIP OVER COMMUNITY DESIGN CREATED UNDER EMPLOYMENT RELATIONSHIP

DESPOT Stefan (Stefan Despot, student Master studija evropskih integracija na Pravnom Fakultetu Univerziteta u Beogradu), despotbeogradstefan@gmail.com

With globalization, intellectual property has become one of the most profitable activities, leading to increased competition and elevating the standard quality of intellectual goods. For such purposes, business enterprises started to hire creators, thus causing that most of intellectual goods are created under an employment relationship. Although as frequent as it is, it cannot be said that it is consistently regulated. On the contrary, this issue may be the most disputed nowadays. That is the result of the fact that neither solutions in the case of different intellectual goods are uniform on the domestic level, nor are domestic laws harmonized internationally. That is also the case with the European Union. To fully grasp the stance of the European Union on this issue, the author firstly analyzed the sources of law that cover Community design protection. Later on, the author moved on to the issues of interpretation of the current framework regulating the ownership over Community design under an employment relationship. In the end, the author presented the case-law of the European Court of Justice regarding this issue.

Keywords: intellectual property, labor law, community design, employee, employer, harmonization, employment relationship