ITALY - DEVELOPMENT BILL: criminal law innovations related to intellectual property

With the final endorsement of July 9, 2009, Senate has given the go-ahead to a bill aimed to sustain development. Once come into force, the bill will entail some significant changes to the Criminal Code and to the Industrial Property Code.
From a criminal standpoint, some of the most significant innovations consist in:
- increasing of sanction strictness;
- introduction, in Art. 473 CP, of the clause “whoever, being aware of the existence of the industrial property right, counterfeits…”;
- introduction of the relevant aggravation of “orderly” and “organized” counterfeit;
- extenuating circumstance for people who cooperate with authorities in inquiries;
- administrative seizure in any case of counterfeit.