Electronic Commerce (E-Commerce) is the trading or facilitation of trading with products or services over an electronic network such as the Internet. Any kind of business transactions (e.g. purchase and sale of products and services) and electronic business processes (e.g. advertisement, After-Sales-Services, Online - Banking) can be considered “E–Commerce”.
The European Patent Office (EPO) offers inventors a uniform application procedure which enables them to seek patent protection in up to 40 European countries since 1977. The offices of the EPO are located in Munich, The Hague, Berlin, Vienna and Brussels. Supervised by the Administrative Council, the Office is the executive arm of the European Patent Organisation.
The principles of exhaustion constitute a limit of the intellectual property (IP) rights. The principle regulates that after a product protected by an intellectual property right has been sold by the intellectual property right owner or by others with the consent of the owner, the IP right over this given product is said to be exhausted because the IP right owner has already received the full benefit of the IP right from the first sale. Purpose of this principle is that the purchaser should be able to do whatever he likes with the protected work without any constaints.
Exploitation is the use of a patent, a utility model, a trademark or a work protected by copyright with the aim to receive a monetary compensation.
The Unfair Competition Act defines exploitation of reputation as inadequate exploitation of the appreciation of a product by a counterfeit.
The European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) is the trademark and designs registry of the European Union. It is based in Alicante, Spain. The mission of EUIPO is to promote and manage Community Trademarks and Community Designs within the European Union. The languages of the office are English, German, French, Italian and Spanish.