Rights holders and public procurement
Today, for many private companies, participation in public procurement has become a commercially attractive direction of business development. It is not surprising then, that unscrupulous market participants, will seek to obtain public contracts by any means available, including at the cost of violating the rights of third parties. One problem in this regard, is the violation of the exclusive rights of copyright holders on the part of those entities participating in tenders, when the execution of the contract requires the supplier to have the respective rights.
This issue is the most acute in the area of public procurement of medicines, where offenders win a tender for the supply of drugs protected by patents, and in the area of procurement of expensive equipment (including medical) – here the subject of violations are usually trademarks, while in the procurement of software, this involves primarily copyright objects.
