OHIM
“OHIM IS MORE THAN JUST A
TRADEMARK OFFICE. IT HAS ALSO TAKEN ON RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE EUROPEAN OBSERVATORY ON INFRINGEMENTS OF IP RIGHTS.”
situation in which we all work together in an atmosphere of transparency and mutual respect, dealing with the issues facing IP at both the national and EU levels so that we have a fully joined up system”.
“Under the Convergence Programme we have five projects including the harmonisation of goods and services project and the class headings project which are currently making great progress in an area where some people thought that agreement was impossible. Agreement is possible. It is happening right now,” he says.
There is also OHIM’s Cooperation Fund, set up in 2010 to promote harmonisation through specific one-off projects to deliver concrete benefits. Campinos explains that there are currently 18 projects active under the fund “related to building common tools ranging from e-filing to quality, e-learning, seniority and common databases such as EuroClass and TMview”.
Both the latter two are “really taking off”, as Campinos puts it. TMview allows users to search, free of charge, the trademarks of all official trademark offices which are participating at national, international and EU level. It is available in 22 languages, and currently has 20 participating trademark offices, with nearly 7 million trademarks in total.
20
Campinos says: “Our goal is to have all the EU offices integrated by the end of this year. Te priority is to finalise the participation of all EU offices in both EuroClass and TMview. We are confident that this will be attained in the coming months. Of course, we would be delighted if the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) were to take part in TMview, as it has already joined EuroClass. We would also like the other major world IP offices to participate. In fact, we have Memorandums of Understanding with a number of other offices outside the EU under which integration into TMview is one of the common objectives.”
Tackling the fakers
These days, OHIM is more than just a trademark office. It has also taken on responsibility for the European Observatory on Infringements of
Intellectual Property
Rights, which provides a platform to share best practice dealing with infringement. It has been responsible since June 5, 2012, and Campinos reports that progress has been good.
“We have been working with the European Commission to ensure a smooth handover of responsibility for a number of the Observatory’s ongoing projects related to public awareness, tools for supporting enforcement activities, developing
IP World Intellectual Property Review September/October 2012
competencies for enforcement authorities, and the sharing of best practices in IP enforcement strategies.”
But it is not just a question of continuing what the Observatory is already doing. “Te first thing we did aſter being formally entrusted with the Observatory was launch a consultation on what the future tasks and priorities for the Observatory should be,” Campinos says. “Tis was in order to make sure that everyone—with no exceptions—who has a view on these issues has a chance to be heard.”
Tat consultation resulted in more than 80 contributions from different organisations, some represented on the Observatory and some not. “We are still analysing the results of this exercise, but from member state representatives there was an emphasis on the need to raise public awareness and enhance enforcement capability,” Campinos says, “while the private sector responses stressed the need to understand the dynamics in society in response to technology, and to provide policy recommendations based on tangible facts, while at the same time evaluating the effectiveness of existing legislation.”
He adds that one of the reasons such an approach is necessary is to tackle the “information gap” about the role of IP in the
www.worldipreview.com
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120 |
Page 121 |
Page 122 |
Page 123 |
Page 124 |
Page 125 |
Page 126 |
Page 127 |
Page 128