36. Calls on the Commission to provide funding for measures and pilot projects making it possible to identify appropriate models for art education at school through the introduction of a European system for the exchange of information and experiences for the benefit of arts teachers;

35. Calls on the Commission to provide funding for measures and pilot projects making it possible to identify appropriate models for art education at school through the introduction of a European system for the exchange of information and experiences for the benefit of arts teachers;

There was also a workshop held in Ottawa with the Inuit Art Foundation, entitled Connecting Cultures and the Business of Art. In fact, the reason we worked on this project was that the Russian Federation for Indigenous People felt that the Indian and Inuit Art Centres at Indian and Northern Affairs and the Inuit Art Foundation were the model organizations and institutions for what they are trying to do in Russia.

The Writers' Union of Canada urges the Government of Canada in its next budget to increase funding to the not-for-profit arts sector through the Canada Council for the Arts by $5 per capita, effectively doubling the current annual contribution; introduce a copyright income deduction for creators, modeled on that used in the province of Quebec; introduce a limited back-averaging plan for the professional income of creators whose incomes fluctuate; exempt from taxation subsistence grants for creators administered by the Canada Counci ...[+++]l for the Arts; grant the Public Lending Right Commission's request for a budgetary increase to bring its hit rate up to a level more aligned with the hit rate established 18 years ago; support the Writers' Union of Canada in its efforts to seek secured creditor status for writers in the event of publishers going into receivership; and extend employment insurance benefits to self-employed creators, and creators who work in paid employment to supplement their self-employment, to make them eligible for EI when employment is lost.

Inventions would be considered as involving inventive activity if they represented an advantage and, from the point of view of those in the particular fields, were not derived in a very obvious way from the state of the art. The definition of inventive activity is a key element in the proposed Directive, as it enables the utility model to be distinguished from the patent.

The ESC recommends: - a further preventative analysis of protection systems complementary to the patent, to be described as "utility models" (UM), together with a more complete integration of available assessment data; special regard to be paid in this connection to weaknesses in the EU patent system, which is still seriously incomplete and disparate compared to its main competitors, the USA and Japan; - a guarantee, in the event of proposals for harmonization, not only of measures for the harmonization of substantive laws, but also of procedures and timescales for obtaining and enforcing UMs, together with the introduction of a cheap, ...[+++] quick and easy (especially for SMEs) assessment and enforcement method which excludes substances and processes from eligibility for protection; - a guarantee of eligibility for UMs for innovations which satisfy the following requirements: a) "absolute novelty"; b) "possibility of application in the industrial field"; c) "inventive step" (Art. 56 of the Convention on the European Patent) or which have a practical industrial advantage over the previous state of the art; the scope of protection should emerge from a limited number of "claims" and the search for earlier "state of the art" should be optional in general, and compulsory for those wishing to enforce UM rights vis-à-vis a third party; - investigation into the feasibility of active assistance and advice in respect of national UM deposit and registration procedures being provided for firms - particularly SMEs - by a central Community or European agency; and investigation of the scope for application of computer digital language to the European patent system; - deferral of any measures for mutual recognition until substantive and interpretative harmonization has taken place; a feasibility study on creation of a Community UM covering the whole of Europe could be carried out, but only after a thorough examination to check that harmonization and mutual recognition measures ...