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MARQUES Further Responses |
| Overview |
Background Documents |
MARQUES April 2010 Responses |
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| MARQUES visit to the European Commission’s DG Markt in
Brussels on May 11, 2010 |
A
MARQUES delegation travelled to
Brussels to discuss and elaborate on the
responses filed by
MARQUES with the
Max Planck Institute and the Commission. The delegation was primarily made
up by members of the Ad Hoc Study Task Force and included Tove Graulund,
Jane Collins, Diana Versteeg and David Stone, also chairing the Designs Team
and Jochen Höhfeld, Vice-Chair of the Trademark Law and Practice Team and
Till Lampel, Chair of the Unfair competition Team. The delegation met with
the Director for Knowledge-based Economy at DG MARKT, Margot Fröhlinger and
members of her staff, Thomas Eichenberg and Tereza Billerault Vyborná.
MARQUES had four points that stood out as particularly important for the
Study.
The first one was harmonisation, i.e. 1) Procedures at OHIM, at national
offices and between them, 2) Enforcement and 3) laws relating to unfair
competition. On the subject of how to further harmonisation the Commission
pointed out that as a matter of fact the H in OHIM stand precisely for
Harmonisation, and it was discussed if and how OHIM could take a lead in
connection with new steps to enhance the single market. Different options
were debated, including a future role that OHIM might take on, particularly
in relation to the Observatory. MARQUES took the view that harmonisation
would be more likely to progress if OHIM performed the various tasks and
acted as coordinator rather than the tasks being passed on to different
other bodies.
The second point was the discussion around the perceived cluttering of the
Registers. As already pointed out in the
responses
MARQUES feels that the CTM system works very well and that there is no reason to take any serious
measures to hinder the free use of the system or indeed reduce the
attraction of the CTM. MARQUES has made a
statement in connection with the
Benelux decision on genuine use. MARQUES asked for clarity to be established
very quickly on this vital point. The Commission informed the delegation
that the Benelux and Hungarian position was considered not to be in
conformity with the wording and spirit of the relevant provisions of the CTM
Regulation and to be out of line with the Commission’s understanding of ECJ
jurisprudence. MARQUES suggested that if any measure were to be taken to
alley fears of “cluttering”, it should be to make opposition and
cancellation procedures as efficient and reliable as possible whilst keeping
the fees reasonable. In this connection MARQUES pointed out that it would
also be important that steps were taken to create harmonisation and
efficiency in connection with conversion, which is an important
functionality in the use of the CTM system.
The third point was the transfer of funds to national offices and the
financial situation of some of these. MARQUES stipulated that whilst it had
agreed to support the so-called Compromise Solution which included to
partition of 50% of the CTM renewal fees to national office as agreed by
OHIM Administrative Board and Budget Committee in September 2008 (prior to
users’ observer status), it had been on certain conditions and only as a
“full package”. In order to meet its own concerns regarding the 50%
MARQUES
had suggested in its
responses that only offices that were fully
independent, i.e. in control of their own income and expenditure, would
qualify to receive funds through the partition of 50%. The concern was that
those offices that run on a State budget and were not independent, would not
receive the funds and that the funds would simply disappear into State
coffers and be used for other purposes entirely. The Commission stated that
they are not able to interfere in how the national offices are set up, but
that they are in the process of studying how it will be possible to
stipulate that the funds are used only for the intended purposes.
The fourth and last point was the remaining surplus of OHIM.
MARQUES
specified that it was important to ensure that the surplus did not continue
to increase by taking the appropriate measures. In this connection
MARQUES
referred to the proposal to reduce renewal fees. Furthermore, the proposal
by OHIM to refund the surplus to the users was discussed.
MARQUES expressed
interest in having this proposal looked at as one option, but was at the
same time interested in discussing any other ideas of spending the surplus
on non-recurrent IP related projects on an EU level, similar to the thoughts
of increasing OHIM’s role in connection with the Observatory. The Commission
confirmed that they are also looking at increasing the number of ideas of
how to deal with the remaining surplus. It was agreed that the responses to
the Max Planck survey might give rise to more such ideas and that this topic
needed to be analysed carefully to come up with projects that would be of
valuable benefit to users.
MARQUES will keep in close contact with the Commission and continue to be
involved in the discussions. |
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