The apparently difficult financial state of Cyprus Airways, Cyprus's national air carrier, has led to a  decision to transfer its portfolio of registered trademarks and indicia to the Cypriot State, which, however appears to own more than 90% of Cyprus Airways's shares. According to a press release by Cyprus Airways the value of the transaction is set at 1,2 million Euros, but it may end up being higher following an appraisal of the marks. Designmag.gr reports (in Greek) that the marks will be leased back from the Cypriot State to Cyprus Airways. 

Aside from any, relevant or not, competition / state aid concerns, this blogger is curious on the manner under which trademark rights of essentially state owned enterprises are appraised when the state buys them and if such appraisal would or should be different when a truly third party is the purchaser. 

On another twist of these news, this blogger recalls a time (should be the mid 90s) that the European Community took the path of liberalizing one market after the other and state owned enterprises and their intellectual property rights were less than popular. The global financial crisis which hit Cyprus quite hard shows how things may change.