Roving Seminars on European Community Trademark

IP Key and SAIC organised two full day seminars on the Community Trademarks system y in cooperation with Liaoning and Heilongjiang AIC, addressed to Chinese business community, public officers and trademark attorneys.

Each of these seminars had 70-80 attendees among Chinese businesses, IP lawyers, IP consultants, government officials.

These events, respectively in Shenyang on September 25 and in Harbin on September 27, also allowed additional discussions on TM best practices with SAIC experts and enhanced international cooperation with local AIC on TM matters.

The seminars provided an overview of the EU legislation on trademarks, CTM system and related application procedures, scope of protection, costs and resources to help in the CTM application process, adopting a practical business approach.

Topics covered by presentations of key speakers included:

• Overview of the Community Trademark system, in the framework of available legal tools to protect Chinese brands in the EU.
• Recent innovations and changes in the CTM system.
• Targeting the characteristics of Chinese CTM applicants.
• Resources and information for CTM applicants from China
• Trends and expected developments in the EU trademark system
• The outreach of the recently reformed Chinese TM Law

Presentations of EU and Chinese expert opened the floor to extensive discussions, in particular between SAIC and OHIM experts, on a number of TM best practice issues, that allowed continuing a set of productive exchanges started in Beijing on previous Monday (see “EU China Workshop on Trademark Best Practice”), particularly on the protection of well-known marks and the issue of applications filed in bad faith.

The parties agreed that further exchanges between EU and Chinese experts should be encouraged in future IP Key activities on the above matters to achieve common understandings in view of future reforms.