Industrial property: legal protection of designs
The Council had held an in-depth debate on the proposal
for a directive. Significant progress had been made on the basis of a
proposal for an overall compromise text put forward by the presidency.
However, it had not been possible to find a solution to the most
controversial problem, namely the so-called repairs clause. While all the
Member States would have been capable of accepting the presidency compromise
text as part of an overall package – the content of the agreement being to
defer temporarily any relevant harmonisation of national legislation – the
Commission was not to be won over, given that this solution was fundamentally
out of line with its amended proposal, as based on an amendment tabled by
Parliament. In the light of the position adopted by the Commission with
respect to this clause, unanimous agreement by the Member States on the
overall compromise text would have been necessary in order to adopt a common
position. This unanimity had not been possible, given that one