Some light reading

The IPKat would like to take the opportunity to wish a Happy 40th Birthday to the Benelux Office for Intellectual Property (BOIP). Originally born as the Benelux Trade Marks Office on 1 January 1971, the BOIP is now a key player in the international intellectual property landscape, and more specifically, in the international registration systems for trade marks and designs administered by WIPO.

To commemorate the occasion, the BOIP published In Varietate Concordia?: National and European Trademarks living apart together. The work is collection of essays by well known authors on new problems in trade mark law:

• Charles Gielen, ‘Has Benelux law influenced European trade mark law?’ (in Dutch);
• Mireille Buydens, ‘Can you have a distinctive mark and a risk of confusion?’ (in French);
• Sylvie Mandel, ‘Use of marks on the internet’ (in French);
• Jeremy Phillips, ‘Interpreting Territorial Use of a Community Trade Mark in Light of the Joint Statements’ (in English);
• Mihaly Ficsor, ‘The Territorial Dimension of the Genuine Use Requirement for Community Trade Marks’ (in English);
• Katia Manhaeve, ‘Territorial Usage of Community trade marks: from a user’s perspective’ (in French);
• Daniel Bereskin, ‘The Territorial Effect of Trade Mark Registration: a North American Perspective’ (in English);
• Tobias Cohen Jehoram and Henriette van Helden, ‘Famous, more famous, the most famous: protection of goodwill in trade marks’ (in Dutch);
  
• Marten Bouma, ‘Strategic choices concerning the protection of marks’ (in Dutch);
• Patrick Marichal, ‘All roads lead to Rome are via The Hague, Geneva or Alicante’ (in French);
• Richard Ashmead, ‘An Approximation of Harmonisation and Differences in EU Law & Practice on Class Headings’ (in English);
• Roland Knaak and Philipp Venohr, ‘Coexistence in Future European Trade Mark Law’ (in English).
  

The book is well worth reading (even with Babelfish translations if you are not fluent in all three languages) for the sustained treatment of trade mark issues arising at the national, community and international levels. It also has the honour of being the first book this Kat owns which comes with its own commemorative book box.

The IPKat notes some useful BOIP trivia: the Office itself claims the fastest trade mark processing times in the world and was ranked first in terms of overall performance in an international survey published by Managing Intellectual Property in May 2010. Merpel suggests that this trivia should give the UK’s IPO something to aspire to …
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Bibliographical details: hardback, pp 184, ISBN 978-90-811477-3-6. Available only if you are a friend of the BOIP, or a friend of a friend, it seems, since no purchase details are provided. Rupture factor: minimal. Bookcase show-off factor: high.