March 2023

The 2023 edition of the MARQUES Spring Meeting facilitated a much-anticipated workshop focused on European Converging Practices (CPs) and recent case-law. This was one of the highlights of the event that took place in early March in Frankfurt, Germany and was attended by MARQUES Council and Team members, exclusively.

Andreea Bende Partner, who represented SIMION & BACIU at the event, offered us a peek behind the scenes of this workshop. As a member and recently appointed Vice-Chair of the European Trademark Law and Practice Team of MARQUES, Andreea worked in the background of this initiative to offer substantial support to the speakers: Dr. Johannes Fuhrmann, Augusto Drumond and Marianna Karjanlahti-Perini and to Jana Bogatz, who moderated the event.

The panel discussions spiralled over the following topics:

• a brief overview of past completed CPs on trade marks and designs
• specific information on the on-going project CP13 relating to trade mark applications in bad faith, with a focus on the mandatory and non-mandatory factors for establishing bad-faith and providing answers to various scenarios usually addressed by bad-faith claims, including parasitic behaviour, breach of fiduciary relationships, defensive registrations, re-fling and speculative purpose.
• an overview of CP14 relating to trade marks contrary to public policy/accepted principles of morality. Interactive examples of signs which would or would not be accepted at registration from this perspective were explored during the presentation, as such examples were proposed to be included in the common practice recently published for public consultation. This part of the workshop triggered ample discussions amongst the audience and also revealed the liberal, business-friendly position adopted by MARQUES in the working group, emphasizing on the fact that bad taste is not automatically contrary to morality.

The key takeaways from the workshop:

• the above mentioned projects are of high importance for the intellectual property community as they are aimed at achieving the harmonization of practices of member states through a process of sharing information and mutual understanding that includes the participation of all interested parties, namely EUIPO, National and Regional IP Offices and User Associations.
• MARQUES invests substantial efforts in terms of knowledge and time in representing and advocating for the interests of brand owners in such projects. 

For more information about past CPs please visit: https://www.tmdn.org/network/converging-practices

For more information about MARQUES, the European association representing the interests of brand owners since 1986 and the benefits of joining the association please visit: https://www.marques.org/

Should you like to gather more insights on the approach and the next possible steps in their regard, please reach to Andreea who would be pleased to elaborate.

To learn more about SIMION & BACIU’s award-winning IP practice please visit the dedicated page HERE.