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Those Who Claim That Significant Copyright-Related Benefits Flow from Greater International Uniformity of Terms Point to T Issue 5 - October 2015 Dear Colleagues, It is with great pleasure that we are presenting the fifth issue of this Newsletter, the purpose of which is to provide a platform for the exchange of experiences and ideas among staffers of the European Parliament and the Congress in the area of legal affairs. The main purpose of this issue is to introduce the Members of the Legal Affairs Committee of the European Parliament (JURI) who will be visiting Washington, DC on November 3-6, 2015, as announced in the the last newsletter from July 2015. An ambitious programme of meetings has been set up with the purpose of discussing questions relating primarily to Civil Justice, Private International Law and Intellectual Property Rights, with both public counterparts and private stakeholders. This newsletter will also include brief background descriptions in view of the meetings that the Committee delegation will hold in Congress, with the US Administration and the Supreme Court, as well as with civil society and industry. The week of the visit will be a busy one indeed for the European Parliament in the US capital, with close to 40 MEPs visiting at the same time. In addition to the Members from JURI, the Constitutional Affairs Committee (AFCO) and Parliament's Standing Delegation for relations with the US will also have Members visiting with official missions, the latter for an interparliamentary meeting (IPM) in the context of the Transatlantic Legislative Dialogue (TLD). Political groups from Parliament and individual Members are also visiting Washington next week with their own agendas and meeting programmes. "Those who claim that significant copyright-related benefits flow from greater international uniformity of terms point to the fact that the nations of the European Union have adopted a system of copyright terms uniform among themselves ... European and American copyright law have long coexisted despite important differences, including Europe's traditional respect for authors' moral rights." Justice Breyer in his dissenting opinion in Eldred v. Ashcroft Antoine Ripoll Robert Bray Head of the European Parliament's Head of Unit Liaison Office with the US Congress Committee on Legal Affairs, EP Subscriptions: please email the JURI Secretariat : [email protected] Credits & Acknowledgments European Parliament - Committee on Legal Affairs Head of Secretariat: Robert BRAY - [email protected] Administrator responsible: Magnus NORDANSKOG - [email protected] Editorial/Production Assistant: Marcia MAGUIRE - [email protected] The work and responsibilities of the Legal Affairs Committee As outlined in the newsletter from November 2014, the Committee on Legal Affairs is the standing committee of the European Parliament responsible for all horizontal issues relating to better regulation. In addition to its responsibility for legislative dossiers within central legal areas, such as civil law and procedure, private international law, commercial law, company law and intellectual property law, the Committee has a very important role as the Parliament's legal advisor. This role follows from the Committee's responsibility for the interpretation, application and monitoring of Union law and international law, and includes giving opinions to other committees in Parliament concerning the legal bases of legislative proposals and on the delegation of legislative powers to the Commission, and recommending to the President of Parliament whether to initiate litigation or intervene in on-going cases in the Court of Justice. The purpose of the mission to Washington, DC, on 3-6 November 2015, is to dicuss primarily questions relating to Intellectual Property Rights, which are very high up on the agenda internationally today, not least when it comes to efforts to reform copyright to the digital environment and the negotations for a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), for instance relating to Geographical Indicators (GIs), denominations of origin for in particular agricultural products. In addition, the Committee is going to Washington to discuss questions pertaining to Private International Law (PIL) and civil justice, for instance the Judgments Project under the Hague Conference on PIL and questions relating to civil liability when it comes to new technlogy, such as robotics and Articifial Intelligence (AI). _______________________________________________________________________________ Pavel Svoboda, Chair of the Committee on Legal Affairs Pavel Svoboda, from the Czech Republic, has a strong academic background as a Professor of European law at the Law Faculty of Charles University in Prague and his former posts include those of Attorney at Law, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ambassador of the Czech Republic to the Council of Europe, Minister, and Chairman of the Legislative Council of the Czech Republic. He has dedicated his professional career since 1999 to European integration and EU law. A member of the centre-right Group of the European People's Party, in addition to being the Chair of the Legal Affairs Committee, he is also a substitute member in the Parliament's Transport Committee and very active in working with EU candidate and neighbourhood countries, such as Montenegro and Ukraine. _______________________________________________________________________________ Robotics and civil liability Robotics is ever more present in daily life, and this is set to intensify. The development of robotics and artificial intelligence represents one of the most relevant technological innovations of the current century, a revolution with profound impacts on the economy and society. Whereas the first robotics revolution of the 1970s saw the emergence of industrial robots, the current second robotics revolution is built around inter-connected service robots. Robotic applications are now very different from one another, ranging from automated vacuum cleaners to a prosthetic limb, a personal robot, a flying drone, a driverless vehicle or a surgical robot. 2 First generation industrial robots were contained in a "cage" to avoid any contact with humans. Second generation robotics are now moving "out of the cage" to interact directly with humans. Consequently, issues such as liability rules and insurance, standardisation, regulation of human enhancement are recurrent to new robotics. In addition, new roles for robots obviously raise moral and ethical questions, as does the prospect of self-enhancing artificial intelligence. While the European Commission has identified robotics as one of the flagship initiatives within the Horizon 2020 research framework to secure Europe's global competitiveness, so far decision-makers have shown limited interest in the wider legal challenges around robotics. The issue raises a number of legal questions related to liability and responsibility, which current EU regulations do not appear to provide an adequate response to. The Committee on Legal Affairs has therefore decided to establish a Working Group on "Legal questions related to the development of Robotics and artificial intelligence" in order to reflect on legal issues and to pave the way for the drafting of civil law rules on robotics and artificial intelligence. The members of the working group represent the different political groups in the EP and the Committee on Industry, Research and Energy, the Committee on the Internal Market and the Committee on Employment and Social Affairs also have a representative in the Working Group. The aim of the Working Group is to stimulate the reflection of Members of Parliament on these issues by facilitating specific information, providing exchange of views with experts from many fields of academic expertise and enabling Members to conduct an in-depth examination and analysis of the challenges and prospects at stake. Thanks to impressive technological advances, robots are nowadays widely used, among other things, in manufacturing, agriculture, medicine, housework, disaster response, and even warfare. It is self-evident that the more autonomous robots are, the less they can be considered simple tools in the hands of other actors (the manufacturer, the owner, the user etc.). This, in turn, makes the ordinary rules on liability insufficient and calls for new rules which focus on how a machine can be held – partly or entirely – responsible for what it has done or omitted. The shortcomings of the current legal framework are patent in the area of both contractual and non-contractual liability. As regards contractual liability, it is not unlikely that sooner or later robots will be able to enter into contracts with other parties on the basis of their autonomous decisions. A machine designed to choose its counterparts, negotiate contractual terms, conclude contracts and decide whether and how to implement them can no longer be considered as a simple machine. This makes the traditional rules on liability inapplicable and underlines the need for new, more up-to-date ones. As regards non-contractual liability and apart from cases of manufacturing defects, which would be covered by Council Directive 85/374/EEC of 25 July 1985 on the approximation of the laws, regulations and administrative provisions of the Member States concerning liability for defective products1, damage can be caused by robots' autonomous behaviour. This crucial question, therefore, arises: from a legal point of view, what happens in this case? The traditional categories of liability fail to answer this
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