Welcome to MARQUES 2016 in Benidorm- where sunglasses are mandatory but ties aren't 

Uwe Over (Henkek AG) welcomed the MARQUES family and its 19 teams including the newest Copyright team and gave special thanks to Alessandra Romeo and Ingrid de Groot who serve as the external face and internal guidance of this association. He then reminded all the members to be on the look out for the future events and workshop held by MARQUES ("Meet the judges", "brands and luxury", etc.) thanks to the Education team  There was also a special mention to esteemed colleague David Goldring who left too soon this year. The 2016 conference is taking place in Alicante to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the "CTM" (as all of us practitioners affectionately remember) and gave special thanks to the EUIPO for their support, but also a reminder MARQUES is celebrating its 30th anniversary.

As Uwe took off his tie to match this casual setting of a Mediterranean village resort, he left the stage to Antonio Campinos, Executive Director at the EUIPO who summarized the main achievements of the Office in the past couple years (new updated guidelines, ex post quality control checks, etc). Last year the Office has had an increase of 11% of new trade marks applications which has short term impact in terms of staff and budget. While Antonio recognized the need to improve some areas such as Opposition Division decisions (and hints at some upcoming changes),  he also highlighted the implementation of new tools (TM view/ Design view , conversion seminaries, etc) as  a big success for SME's and national offices. By 2020, the vision of the Office is to build a European IP network and enhance services to users. Thanking MARQUES , Antonio unveiled the range of future cooperation projects with among others, the Chinese PTO and Latin America. Following the EUTM reform, the Office's observatory is preparing a study on litigation trends following the new Trade Secrets directive and there will be a special focus on designs with the a special DesignEuropa Awards ceremony which will take place in Milan on 30 November. Attendees will have a chance of discovering the EUIPO headquarters during the afternoon session on Thursday afternoon - my recommendation is to have a frappe on the terrace overlooking the Spanish coast

Brands v. Trademarks  or the art of "attitude branding"

Mark Devaney handled gloriously the pressure to moderate the opening session of the conference on Brands v. Trademarks. Ricardo Perez (Millward Brown) gave a small quiz to the audience about which images/brands trigger biggest emotions in the consumers and reminded us that marketing teams look to turn an emotion (fluffiness) into a valuable and strong brand.  The brand experience must be salient, meaningful and different. Looking at the top 10 most valuable brands which are part of our daily life [and TM portfolio of the audience], he concluded that consumers are looking for authenticity nowadays. Shane Smyth then took the floor opening with a funny comparison of airlines slogans (and making a joke at the expense of an infamous homely Irish airline) and reminding the audience that "it’s the substance behind the brand which matters, not the brand for itself". Practitioners focus purely on legal issues such as registrability, we play with trademarks (consumer perception, substantial shape of goods, etc) but we may mistake our client's needs in reality. The last speaker was Antony Douglass (Specsavers) explained how the company definitely promotes their "should've gone to Specsavers" brand with attitude and showed the audience a couple of funny TV ads - to keep the audience's attention running before the coffee break - and the humorous approach taken by marketing. In a range of very clever ads, they've used parody (in collaboration with Unilever for an Axe ad), celebrity (Twiggy), social media  (#SHOULDVE) and memes . He ended this entertaining session with a take away list for brand owners (adapt, risk, be agile and engage with consumers in fun ways).

EU Trademark law update and Brexit

The second morning session summarized the important changes of the EU TM reform package by Dimitris Botis (EUIPO) who covered the next steps for the implementing acts  which will enter into force in October 2016.  Kate Swaine (Gowling WLG) then had the tricky task of summarizing the uncertain consequences for TM owners of the so-called "Brexit" and started with the overview of the most popular article 50 [besides Art. 28 declarations] right now of the EU Lisbon treaty. She exposed the possible 7 scenarios for EUTM / UK marks (i.e.: opt-in provisions, conversion, extension of the validity) and some of the long term questions (EUTM vulnerable for non use, diversion of UK and EU law, enforcement, exhaustion of rights, settlement agreements …). Diana Versteeg (Azko Nobel) told the audience that once the shocking news were processed,  her recommended route for brand owners to overcome the Brexit challenge included  filing an IR designating EU and UK and renegotiating settlements.  Tove Graulund (Graunlund Consulting)-in charge of the MARQUES task force to help implement the EUTM reform- explained how we can all learn from mistakes from the IP Translator and Art 28 declarations. A good show of hands in the audience have or will file for it before the deadline this Friday. Many users have encountered difficulties which Dimitris confirmed it was a nightmare also from the EUIPO's perspective. Tove also indicated users would like to see an updated conversion program.