First, OHIM President Antonio Campinos will give a keynote address on the need for intellectual property to adapt to the needs of a modern globalised economy, based on fact-based policymaking and driven by research on its vital and sometimes underestimated contribution to jobs and growth.

But that's not all. Dimitris Botis will give an overview of the Court of Justice of the European Union ruling in ONEL (noted by Class 46 here, causing OHIM to amend its own practice, note here). Dimitris will focus on the legal implications of this controversial judgment and its impact both on Office practice and on real-world filing strategies in order to answer the burning questions: "Is ONEL a game changer? Does it really bring anything new? Which bits of the ruling are the ones to watch out for? How far will it shape European Union trade mark law and practice relating to the territorial aspects of genuine use?" [Class 46 believes this is the first time anyone from OHIM will be going public on what the Office really thinks: not to be missed!].

If you get fidgety listing to people speaking all day long, OHIM will address this problem too. You can have a hands-on demonstration in the use of OHIM’s online search systems as your friendly OHIM representative steers you through the Common Gateway to TMView, TMClass, Taxonomy and Similarity.

Not everyone appreciates that the European Trade Mark and Design Network is a common endeavour, the fruit of collaboration between OHIM and various user associations, not to mention national and regional IP offices, in developing common tools and the harmonisation of practices right across the EU.  With this in mind, OHIM offers conference registrants the chance to get familiar with some of its flagship tools which provide free trade mark information to users in Europe and around the world.

TMview, the online, global trade mark search tool, contains over eleven million trade marks from 29 EU offices, as well as Norway, Mexico, WIPO and OHIM.

TMclass is a free classification tool, which contains data from 31 national and regional IP offices, including OHIM, and is available in 26 languages, including Korean, Japanese and Turkish.

Taxonomy, which has been integrated into TMclass, offers an intuitive, hierarchical structure search for goods and services. Based on the Nice classification terms, it adds broader terms on top, and more specific terms below.  

 Similarity lets users assess whether, and to what extent, goods and services are considered similar, according to the six participating IP offices (including OHIM) which have so far made their data available.

All these tools, and more, can be accessed via the Common Gateway, the entry point to OHIM´s suite of online services.