ABSTRACT
There is an inevitable tension between the objectives of the European Union (EU), as defined and expanded in Arts 2 and 3 of the European Community (EC) Treaty, and national intellectual property law. The EU aims at the establishment of a common market, and economic and monetary union. This is to be done, in part, by removing obstacles to the free movement of goods and services, and by a system ensuring that competition in the market is not distorted. The EC is founded on the philosophy that a free market is the most efficient (by keeping prices down, meeting consumer demand and inducing the production of new goods). Competition is self-destructive, in that it tends, eventually, towards the achievement of monopoly by the most competitive enterprise. Consequently, EU competition policy artificially maintains competition at the expense of monopoly. Intellectual property rights, on the other hand, confer either exclusive (copyright and unregistered design right, for example) or monopolistic (patents and registered designs, for example) property rights. These give right owners power to govern markets by preventing competition. Although these rights are designed to promote national industrial and technical development and economic progress (see Chapter 2), this is achieved at the expense of temporary market exclusivity. Intellectual property rights are also territorial in nature (see 1.3.4), allowing right owners to intervene in trade in their products and services across national borders by third party importers.
