Opening this year's MARQUES Conference, based on the lovely Grand Hotel Dino in Baveno, Lago Maggiore,  Nuncia Varricchio (DSM) summarised MARQUES's activities and achievements over the past year, thanking  those many people whose efforts have been so invaluable. She then handed swiftly over to Loredana Gulino (Director General, Directorate for Combating Counterfeiting, Italian Patent and Trade Mark Office). Loredana explained how Italian legal and administrative processes have been overhauled in light of implementation of the IP Enforcement Directive and improvements within the Patent and Trade Mark Office itself. 

Next to speak was the ever-outrageous but generally lovable Shane Smyth (FRKelly, Ireland), who introduced the conference theme, Reality Check. Taking great pains to emphasise that he was speaking entirely for himself and not on behalf of any organisation, Shane said what many of his audience have often thought in recent times when he picked out the test of likelihood of confusion between trade marks under European law as a prime example of a departure from reality. He also mentioned the increasingly fanciful specifications of goods and services contained in trade mark applications as an area in which it was necessary to get real.

Massimo Sterpi (Studio Legale Jacobacci Sterpi Francetti Regoli de Haas, Italy) welcomed conference participants to Italy with a stern admonition against stereotyping his dynamic and progressive country.  Stories about slow Italian courts should be taken as history, now that Italy has reformed its IP enforcement environment and the Turin Court has been awarded a prize for being the fastest specialist IP court in Europe. Francesco Morace (Future Concept Lab, Italy) and Derrick de Kerckhove (University of Toronto, Canada) then produced some stimulating presentations on how we perceive and react to concepts, words, brands and means of presentation).  It is beyond the wit and skill of this blogger to convey even a fraction of the flavour or the content of either presentation, but it is believed that both -- which contain some dramatic video clips and images -- will be made available on the MARQUES website in due course.