CPA Attends 26th MARQUES Annual Conference in Athens
On 18-21 September 2012, China Patent Agent (H.K.) Ltd. (CPA)’s deputy general manager Mr. Luo Hong and its Trademark Department manager at Beijing office Ms. Liang Hui attended the 26th Annual Conference of MARQUES (Association of European Trade Mark Owners) in Athens, Greece.
The theme of this year’s MARQUES annual conference was “Trade Marks: Sign of the Times”. During the session, expert academics, IP practitioners and industry leaders shared their views on topical issues including:
- opportunities and challenges for trademark owners as a result of technological advances and popularisation of social networking, for instance, online shopping can be an alternative platform for sale of goods and services and simultaneously an arena for trademark infringement;
- impact brought by new types of trademarks such as “fluid trademarks”, in the case of Google, the company chooses to mutate its mark in accordance with regions or occasions to give rise to geographical and topical variants, whether this will dilute the mark’s connection to its brand has yet to be seen;
- the new generic top-level domain (gTLD) naming policy may come up with some gTLDs including geographical and generic terms such as ".berlin”, ".books” and ".lawyers”, which may lead to conflict of interest with the rights of existing trademarks where the marks also contain such generic terms.
The event attracted an attendance of over 600 delegates from more than 70 countries and regions. According to schedule, MARQUES will hold its 2013 annual conference in Monte Carlo, Monaco from 17th to 20th September of the year.
