Denmark is a party to, and enforces, a large number of international conventions and treaties concerning protection of intellectual property rights. It offers adequate protection of such rights. Denmark is a member of the World Intellectual Property Organization. (Department of State: 1995 Country Report)

Patents: Denmark adheres to the Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property, the Patent Cooperation Treaty, the Strasbourg Convention and the Budapest Convention. Denmark has ratified the European Patent Convention and the EU Patent Convention.

Trademarks: Denmark is a party to the 1957 Nice Arrangement and to this arrangement's 1967 revision. A new Danish trademark act entered into force January 1, 1992 which also implements the EU trademark directive harmonizing EU member countries' trademark legislation. Denmark strongly supports efforts to establish an EU-wide trademark system. Further, Denmark has legislation implementing EU regulations for the protection of the topography of semiconductor products which also extends protecting to legal U.S. persons.

Copyrights: Denmark is a party to the 1886 Berne Convention and its subsequent revisions, as follows:

• 1952 Universal Copyright Conventions and its 1971 revision,
• 1961 International Convention for the Protection of Performers, and
• 1971 Convention for the Producers of Phonograms.

Although there is relatively little piracy in Denmark of records or videocassettes, software piracy is estimated at more than $100 million annually. More recently however, piracy has been on the decline as a result of a decrease in software prices, improved protection of programs, and efforts to combat such piracy by the Business Software Alliance. Piracy of other items, including books, appear to be very limited. There are no indications that pirated products are being imported to or exported from Denmark.

One copyright issue of concern to the U.S. involves the imposition on January 1, 1993 of a Danish levy on blank analog and digital audio and video tapes for home use. Pending implementation of "material reciprocity" provisions, U.S. artists as of October 1995 receive national treatment. It now appears that these provisions will be implemented so as to allow the principal U.S. rights holders to share in the distribution of revenues.

The EU, but not Denmark specifically, is named on the Special 301 Watch List or Priority Watch List. Denmark is not identified as a Priority Foreign Country.

In 1991, the European Union completed its directive for the Legal Protection of Computer Programs. All EU members have now implemented into their law the following requirements (Business Software Alliance):

• All member states provide copyright protection for software.
• All member states provide appropriate remedies against acts that infringe software copyrights.
• All member states provide effective remedies against companies that knowingly possess, for commercial purposes, an infringing copy of a program.
• All member states establish legal procedures for the seizure of infringing software companies.

According to BSA, Denmark's piracy rate is 47%, equaling approximately $82 million U.S. dollars. Within Western Europe, Greece has the highest piracy rate (86%), followed closely by Spain (77%). The United Kingdom has the lowest percentage of piracy at 38%. Compare this statistic to that of the U.S., which is approximately 26%. Reducing European software levels to the U.S. level would create approximately 87,000 new jobs and boost tax revenues by $2.3 billion (Price Waterhouse study, September 1995).

Principal 8 of Denmark's IT Plan addresses such concern: "The protection of persons and data should be secured through modern legislation that makes it possible to register, combine and use data for all legal and administrative purposes without bureaucratic procedures." During the last 15 years, Denmark has had a legislation on registers; however, many public officials feel that as public administration has become increasingly electronic, the legislation has seemed unnecessarily bureaucratic for practical administration, especially with regard to statutory reports made to the Data Surveillance Authority known as Registertilsynet. Nevertheless, public officials recognize the importance of firm regulation with regard to sensitive information, which they consider to be information about race, religion and color of skin, political, sexual or criminal matters, and health. Hence, they support very precise rules regarding who can be allowed to register such information, who can retrieve this information, and what it can be used for, including the limits for transfer. (Information Society 2000)

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