On 26th of March 2009 the Finnish Government gave its policy statement on the national Intellectual Property Rights strategy. The policy statement looks forward to the IPR world in the year 2015 and states where Finland wants to be in that world.
The policy statement is an interesting read, covering aspects of copyright, industrial property rights, as well as competition law, but here are some of the main points that relate to trade marks in particular.
The policy statement states inter alia that:
In the future, it will primarily be the international systems that will be utilized in gaining IPR, including trade mark, protection.
The expansion in the number of trade mark applications will create challenges to the trade mark protection system as a whole. Possibly having these challenges in mind, an evaluation of the functioning of the National Board of Patents and Registration (NBPR) will be conducted as early as this year with a view to improving the service and assessing the Office’s role as part of the Finnish innovation establishment. Finland also needs to secure sufficient resources for the NBPR for purposes of maintaining the efficiency of the registration system.
With the purpose of securing necessary expertise in the field, a mandatory “Industrial Property Rights Agent Examination” will be introduced into Finland in the years to come, and all IPR litigation will be centralized at the Market Court by the year 2012.
Also, the need for amending the current Trademarks Act will be evaluated.
Photo: Lehtikuva Oy/Prime Minister’s Office
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