Suisse

Slovénie

Moyens de faire respecter les DPI

1. Please explain whether international treaties which contain detailed provisions addressed to the (judicial) authorities and not to the State itself are considered as self-executing in your system? If not, when there is a divergence between the intellectual property legislation/practices and the international agreement in your country, does the latter automatically prevail? If not, please explain the means allowing your country to fulfill the international obligations? Please cite the relevant texts or jurisprudence.

International treaties which were ratified and officially published under Article 8 of the Constitution of the Republic of Slovenia are applicable directly and thus self-executing. This means that in Slovenia also the TRIPS Agreement is in principle applicable directly, provided that the relevant provision allows direct applicability, i.e. it has to be clear and complete. Current practice of the courts is in favour of direct applicability, as for example in the case of Article 50 of the TRIPS Agreement. There are two judgements related to patent cases, of the Court of Appeals in Ljubljana (Cgp 326/97 from 13 May 1997 and Cgp 552/97 from 12 June 1997), where the ruling was in favour of interlocutory injunctions under the conditions of Article 50.3 of the TRIPS Agreement. Therefore, there is in principle no divergence between the intellectual property legislation and practice, but if it appears, then international agreement prevails, as explicitly specified in the mentioned Article 8 of the Constitution.