The programme was organised together with Singapore’s IP Academy and the IP Office of Singapore, and held on the morning and early afternoon of 28th August.
The first part of the programme focused on the advantages and disadvantages of arbitration. “The speakers gave us the big picture about international arbitration, how it can help in IP and what the limits are,” said Peter Wild, managing partner of Wildpeak and Chair of the MARQUES Programming Team. He welcomed attendees on behalf of MARQUES along with internal relations manager Ingrid de Groot.
In particular, he said the speakers discussed creative ways to overcome the problem of ordering national IP offices to change the register as the result of an arbitration.
Erik Wilbers, Director of the WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Center, bridged the day’s two topics with a presentation on arbitration rules and WIPO rulings. This was followed by a more in-depth look at UDRP proceedings by Peter Wild and Francine Tan of Francine Tan Law Corporation, and an update on new gTLD developments by Erik Wilbers.
“This included advice on how to file a UDRP complaint and how to defend them, with some practical dos and don’ts,” said Peter, who added that it led to a lengthy discussion between speakers and audience.
“This was a pilot project and we hope to repeat it in other parts of the world, with local adjustments,” he added. There may also be further MARQUES events hosted in Singapore, following this successful collaboration with the IP Academy.
The possibility of organising more events on dispute resolution generally will be discussed by the new MARQUES Dispute Resolution Team, which was formed at the Annual Conference in Vienna. They will be looking at issues including pan-European injunctions, and the relative merits of traditional litigation compared with arbitration and mediation.
Issue 057
With three packed days of presentations and workshops, some remarkable venues and lots of busy networking, it was a memorable 29th MARQUES Annual Conference. HouseMARQUES selects a few highlights.
Nearly 40 people attended the recent MARQUES event on protecting trade marks with arbitration and domain name UDRP in Singapore, with some coming from as far away as India, Sri Lanka, Indonesia and California.
MARQUES is pleased to share with members a letter received from the WIPO team following this year’s Annual Conference.
Water toys, golden bears and Jack Daniel’s were just a few of the topics being discussed on the MARQUES blogs Class 46 and Class 99 over the past month.
OHIM is continuing to work along with IP offices across Europe to increase convergence of IP practices. The latest fruit of this labour is the most recently endorsed Common Practice document, CP3: ‘Distinctiveness – Figurative marks containing descriptive/non-distinctive words'.
In a follow up to last month’s article, Özlem Fütman of the MARQUES GI Team discusses Turkey’s GI roadmap for 2015 to 2018.
WIPO is hosting a seminar on the Hague System for the International Registration of Industrial Designs in Geneva on 19th November.