ANALYSIS
State Market Inspectorate Plans &
IPR Protection
the Trade Law explained SMI Director, Kiril Minoski,
recently at an AmCham IPR committee meeting.
The State Market Inspectorate is one of the key institutions responsible for protection of industrial property rights in Macedonia. However, according to the
SMI’s own data, in 2014, 59% of inspections were
carried out in order to enforce the Anti-Smoking and
Trade Laws (primarily related to enforcing shop closing times). This means that the other 38 laws that SMI
is authorized to enforce got only 41% of their attention. Just 0.15% of total inspections
in the same period were conducted to enforce the Law on Industrial
Property.
This practice will continue in 2015,
given directions given in 2013 by the
Macedonian Government for the SMI
to focus most of its time and resources on enforcement of these two laws.
In terms of the Industrial property
Law, the number of inspections depends on the requests submitted by
the IRP right holders, but IPR-related
checks will be also made during the
course of other inspections of the economic operators in order to enforce
Follow-on investments are not rare especially in the
machinery, energy and manufacturing sectors where
companies such as Fresenius, Schneider Electric and
Ball Packaging are good examples.
EM: mCham Serbia recently initiated the
A
“NEW SEE” platform, aimed at increasing
cooperation between AmChams across
this region. What are its goals and planned
pillars?
Piscevic: The idea behind the NEW SEE platform is
to bring a fresh perspective of Southeast Europe,
its potential and opportunities it offers to foreign
investors. By involvement and increased cooperation among AmChams in the region, the idea is to
Emerging Macedonia Winter 2015 Issue 44
“In the forthcoming period we will work on preparation the methodology and checklist for IPR and we
are open for cooperation with all relevant stakeholders. Preparation of the methodology will contribute
in improvement of the efficiency of the inspection in
this area.” said Minoski.
38
other laws
41%
59%
Conversation with Piscevic
continued from page 10
promote the NEW
SEE Region as a compelling and competitive 60 million person market. Thus the goal is to use our network to attract new investments as well facilitate the
expansion of existing investments within the region.
The big kick-start of the platform will be at the first
annual “NEW SEE – See the Potential” conference,
that will be held in Belgrade in late March this year.
It will gather highest government officials from the
region, policy makers, international business representatives and will serve as an opportunity to
promote the region as an attractive investment
destination.
We have big plans for 2015, and are going full speed
ahead!
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