European Judiciaries for Intellectual Property - Is Copyright next?

The European Union in its current state of economic crisis and stagnating growth is looking for ways to increase economic production in order to save itself from further decline. One particular strategy that has been promoted in this regard is to create a common framework for intellectual property rights that can position the EU in competition with other important markets in the world. With Art 118 TFEU the Lisbon Treaty has given a (powerful?) tool in the hands of the European legislator, which was promptly used to advance the negotiations for a European patent, discussions that had been on and off for some decades already. It is not clear yet, whether a European patent as currently imagined, in particular by the Council after the recent negotiations, will stand scrutiny by the CJEU. This paper will take the lessons learnt from the European patent in so far and project them on another very important field of intellectual property: the protection of copyright works in the European Common Market. Similar issues, such as jurisdictional quarrels between the CJEU, national courts and potentially specialized supra- or international courts arise, as well as issues of parallel existence of intellectual property titles with the same scope of application. Whether the EU will be successful in unitizing its intellectual property system will be decisive for its competitiveness in the global market and for its economic future in general. The paper will explore options for improvement in this process.