Kairat Mami, Chairman of the Constitutional Council (Photo: Constitutional Council of the Republic of Kazakhstan) Kazakhstan
On 27 August 2021, to mark the occasion of the 30th anniversary of Kazakhstan's independence and Constitution Day, the Constitutional Council of the Republic hosted an international symposium on “The Internet Era: The Rule of Law, the Values of Person and the State Independence”.
This very high-level online event, opened by Kairat Mami, Chairman of the Constitutional Council of the Republic of Kazakhstan, was attended by representatives of many international organisations, including:
OSCE
European Council
Venice Commission
International Association of Lawyers
German Agency for International Cooperation (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit GmbH or GIZ)
Court of the Eurasian Economic Union
On behalf of the German Foundation for International Legal Cooperation (IRZ), Managing Director Dr. Frauke Bachler delivered a welcome speech to the participants.
The symposium was divided into three different subject areas.
Digitisation and national sovereignty: complementary or mutually exclusive
Respect for human rights and freedoms on the internet: private life and freedom
The state and state power: responsibility towards society and people
Prof. Dr Andreas L. Paulus, a judge at the German Federal Constitutional Court, spoke on “The right to be forgotten in the case law of the German Federal Constitutional Court”.
Other presentations on current issues were given by presidents and judges of constitutional bodies from numerous countries.
The symposium was a complete success as an international exchange of experience on the protection of human rights in the age of digitisation.
IRZ expert and patent attorney Manuel Soria Parra Kazakhstan
On 29 June 2021, IRZ supported the seminar on the “Legal Protection of Unregistered Designs in the EU” organised and held by the Ministry of Justice of the Republic of Kazakhstan.
Representatives of the European Commission, the European Patent Office, the Eurasian Patent Office and the state bodies of the Republic of Kazakhstan, as well as Kazakh judges and patent attorneys, took part in the event.
IRZ expert Manuel Soria Parra, a patent attorney, participated in the event with a presentation on the “Unregistered Protection of industrial Designs”. He addressed the following questions and topics in his presentation:
What can be protected by Community designs?
The territorial scope of Community designs
Considerations of the legislator on the subject
Scope of unregistered Community designs
How do I obtain an unregistered Community design?
Co-existence of registered and unregistered Community designs
Manuel Soria Parra stressed that the EU Commission will revise the EU legislation on design protection after the successful reform of the EU trademark law. The aim here is to improve the accessibility and affordability of design protection in the EU and to ensure that the design protection regime better supports the transition to the digital and green economy.
In addition to the IRZ expert, the following speakers also participated in the event with expert contributions:
Tomas Lorenzo Eichenberg, Senior Expert, Intellectual Property Unit, European Commission
Julie Fiodorova, Head of the Legal Department of the Eurasian Patent Organisation
Aliya Dauylbayeva, Senior Expert, Department of Trademarks, Appellations of Origin and Designs, National Institute of Intellectual Property of the Republic of Kazakhstan
They gave detailed and clear presentations of the legal basis for unregistered designs and provided an international perspective on the protection of unregistered designs in the EU.
At the end of the event, the Kazakh participants asked numerous technical questions, which were answered extensively by the speakers.
The aim of the seminar was to look at the experiences of EU countries in terms of the protection of unregistered designs in the EU and this objective was successfully implemented in a highly productive manner.
Against the background of the ”digital Kazakhstan“ state programme, IRZ, together with the Supreme Court of the Republic of Kazakhstan, organised an online expert talk on e-Justice in German court proceedings on 25 June 2021. The Republic of Kazakhstan launched the “digital Kazakhstan“ programme on 12 December 2017. It is aimed at economic progress and at improving the population’s quality of life through the use of digital technologies. Within the context of this programme court proceedings are successively changed to an electronic format.
Some 40 judges as well as the heads of various court administration offices took part in the expert talk. They made use of the opportunity to gain an in-depth insight into e-Justice in Germany, deal with its particularities and exchange experiences among each other and the with IRZ expert Christian Roch.
Christian Roch, Presiding Judge at the Regional Court of Kempten (Allgäu), reported on the prerequisites for e-Justice in Germany, its practical implementation and the legal foundations for the introduction of electronic files. He gave the participants an overview of the technical solutions in Germany – those which have either been developed and are now in place all over the country, and those which still have to be tested and put into practice.
Christian Roch also covered the different statutory regulations on e-Justice in civil law (specialised jurisdictions) and in criminal law. He went on by outlining the particularities of court hearings during the Covid19 pandemic.
The exchange in the format of an online expert talk provided a good opportunity for IRZ to keep in touch with its Kazakh partners during the corona pandemic.
