These were just a few of the topical issues discussed by MARQUES Teams during the annual Spring Meeting, which took place in Barcelona on 7th and 8th March. After all the Teams had met (some for several hours) the chairs gave brief presentations on recent and planned work.

In addition, the Study Task Force explained the main proposals included in the draft EU trade mark reform plans, which have been circulated on the internet. The Task Force believes they are mostly welcome but that some proposals could be improved, and some might meet opposition, for example from national offices.

The Task Force, grouping members of the Designs, Trade Mark Law & Practice and Unfair Competition Teams, has worked closely with members of the Anti-Counterfeiting & Parallel Trade and Geographical Indications Teams on this work.

On 27th March the Commission adopted the final draft proposals, the text of which have been made available on the Commission's website.

Team presentations
The Team presentations demonstrated the wide variety and importance of the work done in the past year. For example, MARQUES is the only professional trade mark association to have a team dedicated to regulatory issues – and has taken the lead in monitoring and commenting on plain packaging issues.

The Madrid Protocol Team has been focusing on South America, as both Mexico and Colombia have joined the system in the past year; as well as working on encouraging more countries to join, the Team is planning to host workshops to promote the system.

Among other developments, the IP Outer Borders Team is researching the issues of fluid trade marks, social media, human rights and indigenous symbols, and the Brands & Marketing Team is looking at issues such as marketing materials and environmental labelling.

Teams such as China, Cyberspace, Designs and Geographical Indications continue to attend meetings and monitor the progress of legislative developments and international agreements. 

Each of the 16 team chairs spoke for about 10 minutes and showed slides highlighting recent and planned work. The roughly 120 attendees also enjoyed a dinner featuring Spanish cuisine on Thursday evening.

Articles discussing the work of many of the Teams will be published in future issues of HouseMARQUES, which will also include (from next month) a regular interview with Team chairs about their remit and projects. Some Teams are also planning presentations or workshops at the Annual Meeting.

Kay Uwe Jonas Memorial Lecture
The Kay Uwe Jonas Memorial Lecture at the Barcelona meeting was given by Professor Joachim Bornkamm, presiding judge of the German Supreme Court. He chose as his topic “Intermediary liability for trade mark infringement” and discussed recent EU case law and how the German concept of “Störer” fits in.

Reviewing the development of the law on intermediary liability, including a case from the 1950s on the shipping of throat sweets from East Germany, Professor Bornkamm distinguished between intermediary liability on the one hand and aiding/abetting on the other. He explained that carriers (such as lorry drivers) would not be found liable unless there was a causal link between the intermediary and the infringer.

He argued that this was compatible with EU law: the German Störer concept is identical with the “intermediary” described in Article 11 of the E-Commerce Directive, and could be applied to cases such as those involving eBay as a retailer.

Looking ahead, though, Professor Bornkamm said he was “a little concerned” about three references pending at the CJEU, all of which concern questions of intermediary liability and jurisdiction. These are Hi Hotel, Parfumflakon II and Melzer (in which the Advocate General’s opinion has already been published).

The speech was informative and entertaining and also covered issues such as cooperation between European judges, the right time to refer and the need for clear opinions from the CJEU judges. It was given in memorial for Kay Uwe Jonas, a long-time MARQUES volunteer and Council member, who passed away a year ago.

Workshop
The Barcelona meeting also included a workshop on “The threat of genericness: standard problems call for best practices”, presented by the Famous and Well-Known Marks Sub-Team. A full report on this will feature in the next issue of HouseMARQUES.