Reti di imprese e diritti di proprietà industriale

The Italian Lawmakers have passed a bill giving various benefits to undertakings entering into “network” arrangements with other similar business. The bill was supported mainly by the lobby of the Italian Association of Private Business and proved to be a success. The lobby claims that the new network arrangement is immensely superior with regard to the old consortium contract. Nevertheless, an unhurried view to this piece of legislation shows that there are only few reasons to claim such superiority in the perspective of private law, since most of the rules are (and must be) common to both. This argument is demonstrated through the example of how the Intellectual Property Rights work in a network environment.