MARQUES has undertaken a survey of members regarding proposals to introduce new languages such as Arabic, Chinese and Russian to the Madrid System.

Survey results

The survey, which was one of the most popular surveys MARQUES has conducted, had over 300 responses from 56 countries, including Arab-speaking countries, China and Russia. It found that:

• 80% of respondents did not believe that adding one or more of the three proposed languages would be useful for their business, with only minor variations between filing and working language options.
• A greater proportion of respondents from Arab speaking countries, Russia or China believed that adding the languages would be useful, however this was less strongly shown in response to the question about whether respondents would file more IRs if the languages were available.
• A majority of respondents considered that if the languages were added, Madrid Monitor should be available in all languages.
• A majority of respondents preferred to use English, Spanish or French for IRs going forward, with Chinese in fourth place with less than half the support of Spanish as an option.
• When asked which languages respondents felt should be added, there were a range of responses, particularly requests for German (given volume of users) and Portuguese. Other responses pointed out the high number of Hindu and Bahasa speakers in the world. There was also some support for Italian. Other respondents remarked that adding some languages but not others was discriminatory.

Advantages and disadvantages

We also asked respondents to list advantages and disadvantages of adding more languages. Advantages included:

• Less time and money spent on translation
• Better interaction with local offices and understanding of office actions
• Allows brand owners to use their mother tongue, promoting diversity and expansion of Madrid System
• Misunderstandings on goods and services may be avoided
• Better understanding of IP, resulting in less counterfeiting
• Easier communication with companies owning the brands

However, many respondents said they did not see any advantages at all.

Disadvantages identified included:

• Increased complexity, with longer processing times, and longer notifications from WIPO
• Extra time and money to have notifications translated into other languages
• Problems with translations/transliterations, leading to ambiguity, misunderstanding and discrepancies
• MadridMonitor will become less accessible
• Need to appoint local representatives for office actions, leading to more costs
• What about other widely spoken languages, eg Portuguese, Hindi, Swahili
• Applicants may switch to national application systems to avoid problems
• Machine translation is not accurate enough
• Facilitation of bad faith filings

The full results of the MARQUES survey can be seen on the website here.

MARQUES position

MARQUES is supportive of WIPO administered systems being accessible to the broadest number of potential IP rights owners as possible, and for the systems to be as easy, streamlined and cost-effective as possible. This is important to ensure equal access to IP protection for all potential brand owners.

In MARQUES’ view, these two main points – accessibility and efficiency/cost effectiveness – need to be balanced appropriately. We may encourage more users if the system is available in their home language; however if this results in higher fees or a much slower or more error prone system, this disadvantages all users.

Our initial view of the proposal was, that despite the general favourability of MARQUES to increasing access, the implementation of new languages should be addressed in future and not now. We strongly believe that translation technology will improve over the next few years, which would reduce both the risk of error and pendency, so the project should be reviewed again in five years to examine updates in translation technology.

The topic is due to be discussed further at the next Working Group on the Legal Development of the Madrid System in Geneva during the week of 13 November. MARQUES will be represented at the meeting and will report in due course.

The survey was organised by members of the MARQUES International Trade Mark Law and Practice Team.