Insider: a sneak peek into the AIPPI World Congress Program from AIPPI’s Reporter General Ari Laakkonen

In advance of the AIPPI World Congress, we sat down with Ari Laakkonen, Partner at Powell Gilbert and the Reporter General of AIPPI, to learn more about the upcoming program.

The Istanbul Congress takes place at just the right moment for an update on the UPC, a few months after it opened its doors in June 2023.  The update is delivered in two ways: a mock trial featuring an application for preliminary relief, as well as a short panel session.  The mock trial will be run by a panel of current UPC judges and the subsequent panel discussion will include further judicial observations as well as some comments from an industry perspective.  So far, a small number of provisional measure applications have been heard (e.g. an application for a preliminary injunction in Munich) and there is plenty for the panel to discuss.  For example, do UPC hearings have some element of local tradition and procedure?  Have some UPC courts been more frequently used than others?  What types of issues are emerging from the current cases?

Within the range of topics at the Congress, there will also be an update on regulatory reform in the European pharmaceutical sector, a session on SEPs/FRAND with a distinguished panel of experts including in-house counsel from a number of leading companies, and a session on IP & the metaverse.

The extensive Congress facilities in Istanbul will also give many opportunities for networking and informal discussions.  AIPPI Cafes on over a dozen IP topics will be running throughout much of the Congress and it will be possible to simply drop into AIPPI cafes to listen into and take part in the discussion and debate.  AIPPI cafes will run in parallel with panel sessions and at any one given moment there will be a range of topics available.

The topics covered in this year’s Study Questions relate to the doctrine of equivalents for patent infringement, the harmonization of frameworks for copyright collecting societies, proving trademark use, and online marketplaces.  I would encourage everyone to attend the plenary sessions if you can, these are a great opportunity to debate the resolutions and at plenary sessions it is possible for all attending members of AIPPI to put forward their points of view on the resolutions – whether others agree is then determined by votes!

In addition to the Study Questions, this year’s Congress also features a Standing Committee Resolution by the Pharma Standing Committee, addressing the further harmonization of experimental use / Bolar defenses.  Like the Study Question Resolutions, the experimental use resolution will be debated at a plenary session.  This key resolution is another example of AIPPI’s work contributing towards an IP environment suitable for the modern, global, and connected marketplace.

View the full program here.

← Back to News