Luxembourg IP Day addresses legislation, video games and clean technologies

The 5th Luxembourg Intellectual Property Day was celebrated at the Philharmonie in Luxembourg-Kirchberg on Thursday with a conference entitled “Intellectual Property: an economic challenge for Luxembourg”. Organised by the Intellectual Property Office in collaboration with Luxinnovation, the Centre de Veille Technologique (CRP Henri Tudor) and Luxembourg for Business, the event attracted an international gathering of experts in the field of Intellectual Property and speakers like Sylvie STROBEL from the European Patent Office, Michel Gyory, lawyer and lecturer at the universities of Liège and Vienna, Roberto d’Erme of the European IPR Helpdesk and Benoit Lory of DG Trade at the European Commission.
Luxembourg’s Minister of the Economy and Foreign Trade, Mr Etienne Schneider, opened the various exhibition and information stands and addressed the conference by outlining the economic and political framework in which intellectual property operates in Luxembourg, including the opportunities in this domain in the near future.

Business environment makes Luxembourg IP attractive

In January 2008, Luxembourg introduced a new law, article 50bis ITL, according to which “80% of the net positive income received as consideration for the use of, or the right to use, software copyright, patent, trademark, design or model, is tax exempt.” In order to promote research and development, the law stipulates that companies using their own patents can deduct from their profits the equivalent of 80% of the income they would have had if they had granted a license instead of exploiting their patent themselves. This tax exemption must however be integrated in the taxable income of the company in case the patent application is refused. This new legislation thus enables the reduction of taxation of income generated by intellectual property, by reducing the normal tax rate of circa 30% to circa 6% for such income.

Many international companies have chosen Luxembourg as their European headquarters, including information and technology companies such as RTL, SES, Amazon, eBay, iTunes, PayPal and Skype. These examples show that Luxembourg is a place to create platforms for distribution and collecting rights societies. E-commerce, electronic archiving and any other field could complete this list.


Luxembourg ranks highly

In the Global Innovation Policy Index from March 2012, Luxembourg is placed among the “Upper Tier” countries regarding IPR protection; the World Economic Forum even rates Luxembourg 4th. In IP enforcement, Luxembourg is placed 5th ; in Legal System Integrity Luxembourg is placed best.

For more information on IP in Luxembourg, please visit: www.eco.public.lu/attributions/dg3/d propriete-intellectuelle/index.html

Photo credit: Geoff THOMPSON