Romania congratulated on anti-counterfeiting data base

'I can say you are one of the few countries in Europe to have laid the bases of such an IT instrument. The existence of such a data system is absolutely necessary, the same as the development of a strategy to raise the public awareness', Kongstad told a conference held here on Tuesday on the issue of the fight against piracy and counterfeiting.

State Secretary at the Romanian Justice Ministry Gabriel Tanasescu stressed that the ministry plans to harmonise the laws on invention patents, royalties and intellectual property with the European directives and gave assurance that the Justice Ministry would cooperate in order to combat such phenomena.

Tuesday's conference marked the wrapping up of an institutional twinning project called The Strengthening of the Institutional Capacity to Protect the Intellectual and Industrial Property Rights.

The project was implemented by the Public Ministry and it was funded by the European Union with a budget worth 1.9 million euros. The programme was conducted over 18 months and it was mainly aimed at strengthening the intellectual and industrial property rights in line with the EU regulations.

The Romanian Public Ministry had as a partner in this project the Danish Office of Patents and Brands, which was the project leader and its beneficiaries included the Prosecutor's Office with the High Court of Cassation and Justice, the Justice Ministry, the Upper Council of Magistrates, the Interior and Administrative Reform Ministry.

The project's goals included the development of the working methods and the cooperation among institutions, the improvement of the cooperation among the institutions involved in fighting piracy and counterfeiting, the revision of the legal framework and the procedures related to the intellectual property rights, the improvement of the information flow between the institutions and the setting up of a framework for the development of a methodology to estimate the piracy and counterfeiting rate. AGERPRES