Please note our remarks below on moral rights and mandatory licensing and their relationship with insolvency proceedings:

i. Moral rights

According to Italian law, moral rights do not enter the insolvency estate. In fact, these rights are not transferable to third parties unlike an author's economic rights to work, and can never be given up, so they remain with the author even if the author becomes insolvent.

ii. Mandatory licensing

In Italy, in order to preserve exclusive rights to a patented invention, the patent owner will have to implement it within a certain period of time. Specifically, after three years have passed from the date on which the patent was issued (or, if longer, four years from the date on which it was filed), if the patent owner (or successor in title) has not implemented the patented invention, directly or through one or more licensees, any interested party may request a mandatory license for the non-exclusive use of the invention. This rule also applies if the implementation of the invention has been suspended or reduced in such a manner as to be gravely disproportionate to the country's needs for more than three years.

A mandatory license will not be granted if the lack of (or insufficient) implementation is due to causes outside the control of the patent owner (or successor in title), though such causes do not include a lack of financial means. The granting of the mandatory license does not release the patent owner (or successor in title) from the obligation to implement the invention. Thus, the patent will be forfeited if the invention has not been implemented within two years of the date of that granting or if it has not been sufficiently implemented according to the country's needs.

The rules on mandatory licensing also apply to utility models.

In light of all the above, during an insolvency proceeding it will be generally up to the trustee to prevent the lapse of the patent due to the lack of, or insufficient, implementation, and to ensure the implementation of potential mandatory licenses.