Awareness of Privacy and Intellectual Property Rights under the Economic Partnership Agreement between EU and Japan

Only as recent as on February 1^st, 2019 the Economic Partnership between the EU and Japan entered into force. The new agreement will give consumers greater choice and cheaper price. It will not only protect property rights for great European and Japanese products, both in Japan and EU, such as the Austrian 'Tiroler Speck' or 'Kobe Beef', but also allow personal data to flow freely and safely protected between the two partners. The agreement moreover defines that the parties of the agreement are obliged to grant and ensure intellectual property rights such as copyrights, trademarks, designs or patents and provide proceedings against infringer of such rights, including counterfeiting and piracy. This, of course, extends to IT and software goods and services. Awareness of the details of such an agreement is a necessity for both creators and users of such products because awareness of such legal frameworks is a precondition for legal compliance. This work tries to promote an awareness of the intricate nuances of such agreement for software practitioners who do not have any legal background.