THE POSITION OF SERBIA IN THE GLOBAL AND EUROPEAN HARMONIZATION OF INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY LAW

The Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) from 1994 triggered the process of transplantation of a neoliberal model of intellectual property protection from Western highly industrialized countries to the rest of the world, including the least developed countries.

Because of its political aspirations, Serbia has the obligation to implement TRIPS and the law of the European Union. Consequently, the legal profession in Serbia is currently preoccupied with harmonization, and not with the creation of norms that are in the function of the country’s development interests. Thus, the criterion for assessing the quality of regulations has become their compliance with EU law, and not their correspondence with the need for national development and well-being.

With several examples of transplants of intellectual property law from the EU, the author illustrates two contradictory phenomena that characterise this process. Firstly, narrowing the space for the national legislator to adopt a norm that would correspond much better to the current national need. Secondly, leap forward of the domestic legislation on the basis of indisputable values of the European economic and cultural world.