EU enforcement authorities detained 196 million counterfeit items worth an estimated €6.3 billion in 2025, according to a joint report published by the EUIPO and the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Taxation and Customs Union (DG TAXUD) today.

The number is 67% higher than the number of detentions in 2024 and 29% above the previous record from 2023

The figures cover both the EU external border and the internal market.

Recorded CDs/DVDs (including music and film releases, TV box sets, retro games and application software) were the most frequently detained counterfeit goods, accounting for nearly 30% of all seizures.

Toys accounted for almost one in five detentions while Labels, tags and stickers made up more than one in eight articles detained.

Within the internal market, Italy accounted for over 70% of all detentions, ahead of France (6.2%) and the Netherlands (4.8%).

Trade marks were the most frequently infringed rights among the detained goods (57%), followed by copyright (43%) and designs (7%).

At the EU border, Romania accounted for 43% of detained articles, followed by Bulgaria and Italy.

Spain represented more than half of the estimated value of counterfeit goods intercepted by value, followed by Germany.

The study shows how the growing volume of goods entering the EU, combined with fragmented supply chains, diverse transport methods and the expansion of e-commerce, is making counterfeit goods increasingly difficult to identify and intercept.

You can download the full document from the EUIPO website here.

Image taken from the EUIPO website.

The winner of this year’s Lewis Gaze Memorial Scholarship was Marisa Fidalgo Frade. Her winning paper was titled: “Appropriate and proportionate remuneration to authors and artists: A legal analysis within the Portuguese legal framework”.

The Lewis Gaze Memorial Scholarship, established in 1997 as a memorial to the first Chairman and President of MARQUES, recognizes academic achievement.

Entries are invited from students attending university in the country hosting the MARQUES Annual Conference. This year, the students were from NOVA School of Law in Lisbon.

Second place was awarded to Francisco Lobão Alonso for his paper on “Repair-oriented interpretations in EU design law: Exploring exclusions and limitations”.

Third place was shared by Pedro Carrola Soares, who wrote a paper on “Morality and public policy in EU trademark law: Conceptual distinction and application in EU and Portuguese law”, and Ana Sofia Santos, whose paper was titled: “Pixels of protection: The quest to trademark AI-generated images in the EU”

All four students were presented with certificates during the Annual Conference by MARQUES Chair Claudia Pappas (pictured).

After the presentation, they took part in a short discussion about their work.

Marisa said her topic was chosen to appeal to a wide range of stakeholders, including rights management organisations. “The topic arose from my curiosity, professional as well as legal,” she said, adding: “My idea was to understand how remuneration is framed.”

Francisco described the issue of repairability and spare parts as “very contentious”, adding he looked to bring a new perspective: “I thought, how much can I stretch the legal interpretation to encompass a more welcoming mindset for enabling repairability for third parties to make spare parts, and to bring them more into the picture?” His paper reviews the history of design law and then analyses how the exclusions and limitations could apply if circularity is the main goal.

Pedro said his paper on morality and public policy in trade mark law grew out of “academic interest” in how the issue is approached in different European countries. He reviewed judgments from the EU General Court which assess “if a swear word is interpreted differently in another country, or, for example, if a name is interpreted in one way in Amsterdam and another way in Rome”.

Ana described her interest in AI-generated images as a “passion” saying: “I had a lot of fun with my examples. I had to learn about generative AI, which was also fun.”

Since September last year, Marisa has been working as in-house lawyer for a book publisher in Portugal. Francisco currently works as a lawyer at the law and advisory firm Passport Alliance, Pedro is working for an online gaming company and Ana is a contract manager at Airbus in Lisbon.

Amanda Costa Novaes of NOVA School of Law said the experience of holding the Lewis Gaze Award was “amazing”: “It’s very interesting to see the spark of the students and to see their interest in their topics, how they choose research and how they approach research.”

The School’s Masters programme in law, business and technology currently has 44 students and 15 researchers.

It wasn’t easy to choose the winner, said Amanda: “It showed we could be very proud of what we are doing and the level of research.”

Turkpatent cancelled a registration fee notice because of a power-of-attorney deficiency, then disowned its replacement after the applicant had complied. An Ankara IP court rejected the resulting attempt to apply the original deadline, placing legal certainty and reliance at the centre of the dispute. Yasemin Aktas reports

Turkpatent cancelled its initial registration fee notice because it had been served despite a deficiency in the representative’s power of attorney. It issued a replacement, refunded the earlier payment and received a second payment within the period running from service of the new notice. The office subsequently disowned the replacement as having been sent in error and removed the application.

The Ankara First Civil Court of Intellectual and Industrial Property Rights rejected that reversal in a judgment dated 16 July 2026. It annulled the decision of the Turkish Patent and Trademark Office’s Re-examination and Evaluation Board (YİDK) that had upheld removal of the application.

Cancellation of the first notice and reliance on its replacement

The initial registration fee notice was served on 16 January 2023. The judgment records that payment was made later than the 16 March deadline calculated by reference to that notice.

On 20 March, Turkpatent cancelled the initial notice on the basis that it had been served despite a deficiency in the power of attorney supporting the recorded representation. It issued a replacement notice, formally served on 28 March. The earlier payment was refunded. On 28 April, the applicant paid the fee again in full, within two months of service of the replacement.

On 8 May, Turkpatent stated that the second notice had been sent inadvertently and deemed the application lapsed. YİDK measured the second payment against the original notice, concluded that it fell outside the original two-month period and treated it as having no effect.

The office had to account for its intervening acts

Article 22 of Industrial Property Code No 6769, read with Article 12 of its implementing regulation, governs completion of registration and payment of the fee. The court acknowledged the two-month payment requirement. The dispute concerned which official notification could govern the applicant’s obligations after Turkpatent had cancelled the original notice, issued a replacement and received payment within the period running from its service.

The court held that applying the payment requirement also demanded clarity and reliability in administration, reflecting the rule-of-law principle in Article 2 of the Constitution. Turkpatent’s own intervening acts had to be given their legal effect.

Service of the second notice created a legitimate expectation that the office had corrected its earlier error and that a fresh two-month period had begun on 28 March. The applicant relied on that official direction and completed payment on 28 April.

The court held that the formally served notice retained legal effect until annulled, even if it had been issued defectively. When the applicant paid, it was acting on an official notice that the office had not yet disowned. The later claim of error could not justify removing the application in disregard of that reliance.

The reasoning placed responsibility for administrative records and personnel mistakes on the authority. In these circumstances, the office could not invoke its own record-keeping deficiencies, delays in recording representation changes or inadvertent acts to enforce a time limit extinguishing the applicant’s rights. The court treated the second notice as restarting the payment period and found the April payment timely.

Both the original and supplementary expert reports had supported Turkpatent’s position. The judge rejected their legal conclusion after examining the powers of attorney, chronology and office records. Measuring the payment solely against the January notice failed to account for its cancellation and the legal consequences of the replacement.

Why the claim of error did not defeat reliance

Calling a notice an administrative mistake explains why the office wishes to change its position. It does not, by itself, determine what happens to an applicant who has already followed that notice. The court required those consequences to be assessed against legal certainty and good-faith reliance.

Turkpatent sought to enforce a deadline calculated from a notice it had cancelled, after directing the applicant to proceed under a replacement. The resulting risk was concrete: conduct consistent with the office’s current instructions was subsequently treated as insufficient to preserve the application.

For anyone conducting trade mark proceedings before Turkpatent, the case illustrates the risk of an earlier decision or notice being revised on grounds of administrative error after an applicant has already acted on it. The judgment offers a basis for challenging comparable reversals, with the office’s intervening instructions and the applicant’s reliance placed at the centre of the analysis.

Abion bore all the costs of this litigation because, in our assessment, the office’s contradictory handling of the application was arbitrary and the resulting injustice was clear. Our aim was to protect the client’s rights and demonstrate that judicial review can secure clarity and accountability in trademark proceedings in Türkiye.

What applicants should preserve when the office changes its position

Every version of a decision or notice should be retained, alongside proof of service, payment receipts and relevant representation and refund correspondence. The sequence can establish what the office instructed, when the applicant complied and whether the office changed its position only afterwards.

The ruling rests on a formally served replacement notice followed by payment within the period the court held it created. It provides no basis for assuming that every later communication restarts a deadline. The operative order annulled YİDK’s decision; it did not itself order registration. The judgment was issued at first instance with a right of appeal.

Official notices must carry legal consequences for the authority that issues them. An applicant who has complied with a formally served instruction should not lose its application merely because the office later labels that instruction an error.

Yasemin Aktas is Country Manager and Partner of Abion in Istanbul, Turkey and a member of the MARQUES Dispute Resolution Team. Abion acted for the successful party in this case.

The MARQUES Famous and Well-Known Marks Team has published a new comparative report on the recognition, protection and economic exploitation of personality rights and/or the right of publicity.

The report has been prepared by members of the Non-Traditional Marks Sub-Team over the past two years and is one of the most extensive comparative studies of the subject available.

It is available to download from the Team’s page on the MARQUES website (log-in required).

The publication is based on a survey of legal practitioners in 27 countries. The survey comprised 41 questions.

It aims to provide a broad comparative understanding of how different legal systems protect a person’s identity and its constituent attributes including name, nickname, pseudonym, image, likeness, voice, signature, gestures, mannerisms and other identifying characteristics.

The report also examines the legal protection afforded to historical figures and infamous personalities, such as Al Capone or Pablo Escobar. It further explores the relationship between personality rights and freedom of expression, addressing the circumstances in which the use of a person's name, image or likeness may be permissible without consent, particularly in connection with parody, satire, criticism, news reporting, artistic expression and other matters of public interest. In addition, it reviews the legal tools available to combat deepfakes.

The report includes an executive summary, which provides an overview of the main findings, similarities and differences. This is followed by question-by-question analysis and a summary of the 32 principal findings and conclusions.

The survey identified three broad legal models:

• A personality-rights model, principally found in civil-law jurisdictions
• A fragmented or multiple-remedy model, in which no general personality right or right of publicity exists
• A proprietary right of publicity or specific commercial-identity model, principally represented by the United States

A key finding of the survey is that the personal nature of the underlying right does not necessarily prevent the economic exploitation of its constituent elements.

The report concludes that the international protection of personal identity is neither uniform nor based on a common legal doctrine. The same unauthorised use may be treated as an infringement of dignity and personality in one jurisdiction, false endorsement or passing off in another, and misappropriation of a proprietary publicity right in a third.

However, the survey also reveals substantial convergence. Most jurisdictions recognise that personal identity deserves protection against at least certain unauthorised uses; that names, images, voices, and other attributes may possess economic value; that commercial use may generally be authorised; and that protection must be balanced against freedom of expression and the public interest.

The principal remaining challenge is that comparable interests are protected through different rights, terminology, remedies, limitations and enforcement mechanisms. These differences become particularly significant in the digital environment, where uses of identity are instantaneous, borderless, increasingly realistic and frequently difficult to attribute to an identifiable infringer.

The Sub-Team would like to thank everyone who supported this project with contributions. If you have any questions about the report, please contact Juan Carlos Durand or another member of the Team.

ICANN has published the details of 1,615 applications for new generic top-level domains (new gTLDs) that is has received.

The application were filed from April to August this year for both generic and brand gTLDs.

They include 333 brand applications and 16 community-based applications.

North America accounts for most applications (864) followed by Europe (506) and Asia/Australia/Pacific (218).

The publication kicks off a two-week replacement period, during which applicants can switch from their primary applied-for string to a replacement string. A final list of applied-for gTLD strings will then be published on 17 November 2026.

This will be followed by a four-month period for community input and objections. Objections can be made based on string confusion, legal rights, limited public interest, or community. Decisions will be made by a panel of qualified experts and can be appealed.

After the strings have been evaluated, a prioritisation draw will decide the order that applications and contention sets are processed. This is expected to take place in the first half of 2027.

Applications in this round include .alphabet, .facebook, .roblox and .tiktok as well as generic terms such as .agent, .brand, .crypto, .gpt, .hub, .mars, .moon and .robot. A number of these gTLDs have been applied for by more than one applicant.

More information is available on ICANN’s website.

The MARQUES Cyberspace Team continues to monitor the new gTLD programme and will provide further updates in due course. For more information, please contact any of the Team members.

On 21 September, around 30 students took part in an IP training session in Lisbon, joining both online and in person.

The session was organised by the MARQUES Anti-Counterfeiting and Parallel Trade Team, together with ELSA Lusófona Lisboa and ELSA U.Porto, and hosted at Universidade Lusófona.

The training aimed to give students practical insights into IP rights, brand protection programmes across different industries, and strategies for tackling counterfeiting and parallel imports.

Speakers from a wide range of industries shared their perspectives, including representatives from:

• RECKITT (Ervina Vasiljevic, Global Brand Protection Counsel)
• Hugo Boss (Nicole Klug, Global Head of Intellectual Property Department)
• John Deere (Sylvia Piechatzek, Corporate Counsel)
• On (Anna Jakobsson, Director of Intellectual Property)
• Philips (Edanela Perez Broce, Senior IP Counsel)
• Mars (Bence Bozóki, Senior IP Counsel)
• Zurich Insurance (Dorine Martin, Head of Group Intellectual Property)

The two-hour session was moderated by Paul Trapman of Ploum and Anja Franke of Grünecker PartG mbB, who organised the training together with Mai-Britt Kroll, Senior Global Brand Protection Manager at Coty.

The speakers also had the opportunity to respond to a range of interesting questions from the student audience, covering both practical enforcement issues and possible career paths in IP.

Among other topics, the discussion touched on how to distinguish counterfeit products from parallel imports or grey market goods, when similar branding or packaging may cross the line into trade mark infringement, and whether a law degree is necessary to work as in-house counsel or in legal and brand protection roles.

The Lisbon event was part of the MARQUES training series held alongside the Annual Conference, offering students the opportunity to engage directly with experienced IP and brand protection professionals.

Photos provided by Anja Franke

The final day of this year’s Annual Conference in Lisbon began with a discussion of the impact of labelling and environmental laws on trade marks in Europe (Part 7 – Greenwashing was just the beginning). It was moderated by Jan-Caspar Rebling, Stobbs IP Limited, UK, Member of the MARQUES Regulatory Team

Gregor Versondert, Procter & Gamble International Operations S.A, Switzerland, Member of MARQUES Council and Regulatory Team, started the discussion by talking about brand equity. He said this starts with brand awareness and sustainability is increasingly part of it: “A good environmental record does make lots of consumers go for one product rather than another. It will stay with us.”

Jose Maria Azeredo, Lidl, Portugal, agreed, saying that what was once perceived as added value will become common ground thanks to EU regulations. But he added a question is: “How much sustainability can my consumer afford?” as private label products are forced ot become higher priced. Dr Andreas Gayk, Markenverband eV, added that long-term sustainability is key to brand value.

Ingrid De Groot was honoured at the Gala Dinner for 30 years of service to MARQUES, including as Internal Relations Officer, and presented with lifetime membership.

Bernd Weichhaus, JBViniol Partnerschaft, Germany, Member of the MARQUES Regulatory Team, introduced the Empowering Consumers for the Green Transition (EmpCo) Directive. He said that consumer issues, and particularly sustainability issues, are driving regulation and discussed a case study of Edith chickpea crisps, and their claim to have “zero environmental impact”. He said the environmental claims were ambiguous and lacked information.

Bernd said the EmpCo directive has a big impact on trade marks as it prohibits certain labelling which is not justified or supported. It also provides that products claiming to be certified must meet the requirements of that certification. He shared several examples of trade mark applications that include terms such as eco, which have been refused due to descriptiveness or lack of distinctiveness.

The directive marks a shift from market-led sustainability to evidence-based sustainability, said Bernd, who described the enforcement actions that can be taken. Gregor said that, while the legal remedies can be severe, the biggest risk is loss of reputation among consumers.

Eva-Maria Strobel, Baker McKenzie Switzerland AG, Switzerland, Member of the MARQUES Regulatory Team, discussed the digital product passport. “This is a digital file that tells us about the product – where it comes from, what materials, how it performs environmentally and whether it can be repaired or recycled,” she said, adding that it is one of the main tools in the EU’s regulatory framework on green claims. “It’s like the product biography.”

The first passports, for batteries, are being introduced in 2027 with other products to follow by 2029. Eva-Maria said it matters to brands because it means the consumer no longer has to trust what the brand says – they can check. This means the emphasis moves to the data behind the product, she said.

The final session of the Annual Conference, Part 8 comprised the regular review of CJEU and EU General Court case law, focusing on: monkeys, furniture and money. It was moderated by Claire Lehr, Edwin Coe LLP, UK, Chair of the MARQUES Programming Team, and featured Sebastian Fischoeder, Taylor Wessing Partnerschaftsgesellschaft mbB, Germany, Member of the MARQUES Amicus Curiae Team, and Eleonora Viegas, Judge Court of Appeal Lisbon, President of the IP Section, Vice President of the Court of Appeal, Portugal

They discussed three topics arising from recent or pending cases:

• The CJEU judgment in Case C-337/22P EUIPO v Nowhere, in which the Court said that EUTM opposition requirements must be met at the time of the relevant EUIPO or Board of Appeal decision. “The EUIPO or BoA must assess the requirements for the opposition not only at the application or priority date of the subsequent trade mark, but also when deciding on the opposition,” explained Sebastian. The key takeaway is: love and cherish your trade mark!
• The recent Case C-298/23 IKEA concerning IP rights and freedom of expression, in which the CJEU set out the criteria for assessing due cause. Judge Viegas described this as “a fascinating case” and said: “The Court made it very clear that it is the alleged infringer who must establish why, in the interest of freedom of expression, it may use a well-known trade mark.” The panel also briefly discussed whether the Court had gone too far in directing the national court in its judgment.
• Case C-573/25, a referral from Germany on the reimbursement of legal costs which raises questions about statutory fee recovery schemes. This led to a lively audience discussion about the pros and cons of statutory schemes. The Court’s judgment is expected within the next year.
• For all three cases, the speakers ran a poll for the audience to vote on their decision and also invited comments from the floor.

The Annual Conference concluded with remarks by MARQUES Chair Claudia Pappas, a video of highlights and a look forward to the 41^st Annual Conference, which will be in Athens, Greece.

Photos taken by MARQUES staff and editor. Speakers do not necessarily represent the views of any organisations mentioned or of MARQUES.