This morning's MARQUES conference in Noordwijk, the Netherlands, opened with contrasting messages from Edmond Simon (Director General, Benelux IP Office) and Wubbo de Boer (President, OHIM). Both were shortly to be heading for an extraordinary meeting of the OHIM Administrative Board is taking place this week on the acceptability of a package of proposals that will reduce HIM's cash mountain, bring Community trade mark fees down and take into account -- in some mysterious and unexplained fashion -- the interests of national trade mark offices too. Edmond Simon gave an upbeat account of what can be achieved by a regional office in terms of flexibility and sensitivity to users' needs, while Wubbo de Boer (left) portrayed OHIM as an organisation that was almost weighed down by its success. Wubbo was unable to discuss details of the package, but urged MARQUES members to support it anyway as the best way of moving forward.

The first session, chaired by Willem Leppink, was termed "Brands in the Business Box"; it looked at business and strategic models for brand creation and IP development. Jef Vandekerkhove (Philips) described his company's IP portfolio, its evolution and its move towards the endorsement of open innovation in the development and marketing of new products. Readers of Wikinomics will be familiar with the notions, but their application to a specific multi-product global business like Philips was fascinating. A whole range of value-creating strategies is employed, from exclusivity and licensing through to far less control-based policies. Although the company is known for its technological sophistication, its IP portfolio is shifting: the company now holds fewer patents but more trade marks and designs.

Next to the podium was Jean-Paul Decossaux, commercial director of the Royal Dutch Football Association (KNVB). His organisation administers some 35,000 football matches a week, from grass roots to the national team. Jean-Paul discussed the problems of seeking to control and successfully exploit the commercial attraction of football in a competitive environment in which ambush marketing, the inability to control licensing of the national teams' away matches and conflicts of commercial interests with other parties all cause problems -- many of which can be resolved by co-branding. He also spoke of an 'association' model, in which the KNVB's logo and that of other brands are seem in proximity to one another but without any specific item or service being co-branded. No admirer of ambush marketing, Jean-Paul looks for all measures that will block such activities.

On the commercial side, KNVB has now involved itself closely in endorsements, the exploitation of group portrait rights, the sale of luxury packages for corporate hospitality purposes. Given the huge popularity of football, the loyalty that fans are prepared to pay to demonstrate and the thoroughly enterprising nature KNVB, it is hardly surprising that the Association has earned a dramatic increase in its IP income.

The final speaker in this session was veteran brandster Tom Blackett, formerly Deputy Chairman of Interbrand but now, though technically retired, an independent consultant. He praised both Philips and KNVB for their leveraging of IP rights in order to generate extra income streams. Tom pleaded for in-house IP people to be located nearer the marketing people rather than other lawyers, given the nature of their expertise and their need to know what is happening in marketing itself. Otherwise they only get together when there's a problem, such as a threat to an existing mark. Trade mark strategy and general corporate strategy should be developed together, each reflecting the direction of the other -- and one should not merely be a reaction to the other. Highly praised were the 'ingredient branding' strategies run by Intel and NutraSweet, generating huge value in respect of products that consumers did not generally buy on their own but as a part, or ingredient, of another product

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