Misguided Weapons in the New Cold War: A Critical Analysis of the EU’s Patent-Related Sanctions Targeting Russia

The European Union (“EU”) has imposed restrictive measures against the Russian Federation. REG 269/2014 and REG 833/2014 cover various fields including intellectual property rights (“IPRs”). The recent amendment to the existing sanctions shifts from targeting specific IPR holders or IPRs related to specific goods or services to sanctioning all Russian nationals, residents and legal persons, intending to restrict their access to intellectual property (“IP”) filing systems within the EU. Drawing specific attention to policy experiences from World War I (“WWI”), the Russian IP-oriented measures against the EU and its Member States, and the international framework for IP protection, this article gives an overview over the patent-directed sanctions and investigates their effects. It demonstrates the enormous efforts required from patent offices to implement the EU sanctions and the negative impact on the patent systems. We argue that the adopted measures are misguided and advocate for a policy shift, ultimately proposing to withdraw from the field of IP prosecution and to consider IP infringement-oriented measures thereby initiating a transition from public to private enforcement of IP-directed measures.