DO GLOBAL BUSINESSES NEED GLOBAL TRADE MARK SOLUTIONS?
– The need for international cooperation on trade mark issues is widely agreed, but it has proved difficult so far to make further progress in an area that is governed by a range of sometimes conflicting economic and jurisdictional interests. To move things forward, OHIM President Wubbo de Boer has called for a major effort to cut the red tape facing businesses attempting to protect their intellectual properties worldwide. Speaking at the International Trademark Association conference in Sydney Australia earlier this month, he invited the world’s ten biggest trade mark organisations to get round the table with the ten biggest international filing companies to thrash out a workable solution. He offered to host a working conference to take the “first exploratory steps” towards a more transparent and less bureaucratic world trade mark system. The reason being that trade mark owners increasingly dealt with more than one jurisdiction and would like to see their applications dealt with in th
