The topic of the conference New Horizons through the Highland haze, which was tailor-made for the chosen location, outlined all speeches given during these three days dedicated to trademarks designs, geographical indications, copyright and the Internet.
Recent law cases have been discussed, together with EUIPO and WIPO’s regulation updates and the last legal and industrial trends, on the first day with a workshop explaining how to build evidences based on dissemination on the Internet, while on the second day with a short session showing new tools and statistics developed by both WIPO and EUIPO.
During the main session of the conference on June 27th, Christian Archambeau, EUIPO’s new Executive Director and Gregoire Bisson, The Hague’s Registry Director at WIPO trademark and design dept., talked about the latest IP news and trends. In the following sessions, the focus was on the implementation of the EU Directive on trademarks and the discrepancies between national regulations and EUIPO’s rules and practice.
Then, all participants had the chance to get interesting views by members of the industrial sector, in particular some attempts to file non-traditional trademarks (motion marks, multimedia marks, etc.) with EUIPO have been pointed out. In the morning, the discussion finished talking about plant varieties’ names as new types of trademarks, together with single colour and colour combinations marks. In the afternoon, the main topic was the thorny and still evolving matter regarding Brexit, as well as new enforcement strategies for non-registered and/or not yet examined trademarks, and also blockchain as a possible digital tool to trace, monetize and protect non-registered IP rights.
On the last day of conference, attendees could choose between two parallel sessions, one about new IP challenges in the sports world or digital contents and their usability within the EU, the other about geographical indications and their future protection perspectives or the latest news regarding domain names, ICANN and WHOIS. The very last session dealt with the most recent case law in the EU.
Every training day was concluded with a pleasant meeting event for all participants, allowing a little bit of networking and sharing of ideas about the conference’s themes, and always enjoying different and evocative locations.
The conference has certainly given several insights to both IP consultants and trademark owners about the recent and future IP rights developments and the need to constantly be updated in IP matters.
