On March 16 and 17, 2022, Andreea Bende represented ECTA (the European Communities Trademark Association) as an auditor in the Stakeholder Quality Assurance Panels project (SQAP) in 2022.
Initially launched as part of the European Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) Strategic Plan 2020, SQAP aims to close the gap between the users’ perception of the quality of EUIPO’s decisions and its quality measurements.
EUIPO was established in 1993 as a decentralized EU agency and is the Office responsible for managing the EU trademarks and the Community designs. The office also works with the intellectual property offices of the EU Member States (in Romania OSIM – Oficiul de Stat pentru Inventii si Marci) and international partners to offer a similar registration experience for trade marks and designs across Europe and the world.
SQAP involves panels of experts (amongst the users), representing user associations, who carry out audits on a sample of Office decisions pertaining to various procedures undertaking before the office (i.e., trademark oppositions, trademark cancellations, design cancellations, absolute grounds examination, etc.). The decisions are checked against the Office quality criteria.
On 16 and 17 March 2022, the EUIPO welcomed users to such quality audit of the EUIPO’s trademark cancellation decisions (one of the 21 SQAP audits that have taken place so far).
ABOUT ECTA & SQAP: With more than 1500 members, coming from all Member States of the EU and beyond, ECTA promotes the knowledge and professionalism of the intellectual property law community in the fields of trade marks, designs, copyright and other intellectual property rights, within the European Union.
SQAP was launched by the EUIPO in 2017, aiming to integrate the user s’ perspective into the quality management system and to narrow the gap between the users’ perception of quality and the quality measured by the Office. In SQAP, users contribute directly to improving the quality of the Office’s decisions.
https://euipo.europa.eu/ohimportal/en/sqap_audits
About Andreea Bende:
Andreea is a Partner with Simion & Baciu and co-heads the firm’s Intellectual Property Practice.
Andreea has over 13 years of experience in the intellectual property field, and her professional experience focuses on intellectual property rights administration, prosecution and contentious matters, in various industries such as pharmaceuticals, tobacco, FMCG, automotive, fashion, media and telecommunications. Over the years, she advised Clients in complex projects, including domain name and copyright dispute resolution, unfair competition litigation, worldwide re-branding simultaneously performed in over 60 jurisdictions, applications for action before the Romanian National Customs Authority, as well as IP due diligence and IP transactional projects.
She is a member of the Romanian Patent Chamber, licensed both as Trademarks and Designs Attorney since 2008. Her professional affiliations also include ECTA (the European Communities Trademark Association), where she is a member of the Design Committee, Marques (the European Association representing the interests of brand owners), where she is a member of the European Trademark Law and Practice Committee, and INTA (the International Trademark Association).
Andreea is ranked as “Trademark Star” by MIP IP Stars and as Top Trademark Professional by WTR 1000 (Silver Band). She is Recommended as a “Next Generation Partner” in the Intellectual Property Area by Legal 500 and was recently ranked as “Up and Coming” by Chambers and Partners.