Strategy of the intellectual property development for the period of ...

property on the Internet. This fact must be born in mind when the country with smallresources and limited administrative and judicial capacities, such as the Republic ofSerbia, accepts tasks in the field of suppression of violation of intellectual property rights.Along with that, it is necessary to contemplate these problems from the broadersociological angle, i.e. recognize the fact that the weak economic position of the largenumber of people in the country stimulates illegal behaviour which is directed to obtaincertain values illegally, by avoiding to pay the full price. That temptation is particularlyexpressed in the domain of intellectual property, and has culminated by the expansion ofInternet. Accordingly, repressive measures can not be the only answer of the state to thefight against the infringement of intellectual property rights, regardless the resourcesinvested in it by the government.In the last 6-7 years in the Republic of Serbia, advance has been obvious in thesuppression and sanctioning of intellectual property rights infringement. It is difficult todocument in statistical data because they, for now, are not accumulated and processed inan official and credible way, except on the part of the Customs Administration, whichenforces measures of preventing import of pirated and counterfeited goods. In that sense,one should start from the establishment of a system for the statistical survey ofsuppression and sanctioning of intellectual property rights infringement on the part of allbodies having competence in this field. This harmonizes with the approach of theEuropean Commission which established in 2010 the EU Observatory for Counterfeitingand Piracy, which has the aim, among other things, to follow the suppression andsanctioning of the intellectual property right infringement on the basis of harmonized andtrustworthy data.But, even in the absence of statistics, it can be concluded indirectly about a certainadvance that the Republic of Serbia has accomplished in this field. For years, it has notbeen on the list that the government of the USA composes by including the countrieswhere the condition of the respect for the intellectual property rights is disturbing fromthe point of view of the respect for the trade interests of that country. On the basis ofother sources evaluating the condition of protection, Serbia is ranked somewhere amongthe average, as characteristic for the transition country of the West Balkans. It, by nomeans, indicates that the condition is satisfactory, but the positive trend must be stated. Inthat framework, it is worth mentioning that the Republic of Serbia in 2005 ratified theConvention of the Council of Europe on the High Technology Crime, on the basis ofwhich the Law on the Organization and Competences of the Government Bodies forFighting High Technology Crime has been passed (“Official Gazette RS” 61/2005 and104/2009). The fighting against high technology crime affects the protection ofintellectual property right in the segment which refers to the modus of the execution ofthe criminal act. It must be the criminal act executed with the aid of computer andcomputer communication network.System of sanctioning the intellectual property right infringements consists of two majorsegments: administrative (Police, inspectorates, Customs, and Republic BroadcastingAgency) and the legislative. Apart from the taking care of the enforcement of its owncompetences, the efficiency of both these segments depends not only on the inner24