Friday Fantasies

Education and Training

Within the framework of the Strategic Plan 2016-2020, the EUIPO will be providing a course addressed to IP Professionals that will cover European trade mark and design law. Upon successful completion of the course, the participants will receive certification from the Office. The project is targeted at all IP professionals already in practice who are representatives before the Office in European trade mark and design procedures, or who could be entitled pursuant to Title IX - Section 4 of EU Trade Mark Regulation and section 4 of the Community Designs Regulation. The course will be held in English only and will run from September 2018 to June 2019, with a total of approximately 150 hours of tuition, combining e-learning, webinars and two 3-day face-to-face sessions at the EUIPO in Alicante, Spain. Apply between 15 May 2018 and 30 June 2018 here. More details: here.

Fashion expert

Fashion Law Business has announced a summer Fashion Law Masterclass, which will be hosted at the distinguished Condé Nast College of Fashion & Design on 22 June 2018. The session will take the participants through the law of intellectual property in the fashion industry and provide an introduction to trademarks, copyright and design rights as it applies to the business of fashion. The workshop is geared towards giving industry professionals, emerging designers and the next generation of fashion law experts insight into the basics of fashion law, the legal issues to consider when starting a fashion brand, and an understanding of those legal issues currently making a mark on the industry. Enrolment is available here.

Events

Academy of European Law is organising a conference entitled ‘Big Data: Consolidating the EU Legal Framework in the Digital Economy’, which will take place in Brussels on 27-28 September 2018. Key topics include: free movement of data, distinction between personal and non-personal data, intellectual property in the era of big data, and future EU strategy on access, fair use and sharing of Big Data. Information about fees and registration is available here.

The Hague Agreement comes into effect in the UK on 13^th June 2018, and just five days later, on 18 June, MARQUES is hosting a seminar in collaboration with WIPO. This is the latest in its series of events on Mastering The Hague Agreement, following seminars in Munich, Paris and Copenhagen. The seminar will provide an introduction to The Hague System, and detailed discussion of the different substantive requirements in key jurisdictions such as Japan, Korea and the US. The registration fee is £100 (MARQUES members) or £125 (non-members) and registrations can be made online here.

Tilburg Institute for Law, Technology, and Society and the Tilburg Law and Economics Center, are organising a seminar ‘Data Access in the European Digital Single Market’, which is supported by the European Law Institute under its Data Economy project. The event aims to connect academic researchers, industry representatives and policy makers in discussing considerations at the heart of ongoing debates regarding the implementation of data access across different sectors. When: 24 May 2018; where: Regus Meeting Room at the 18th floor of the Brussels IT Tower, Avenue Louise 480, 1050 Brussels, Belgium; agenda and free registration: here.

CITMA President’s Summer Reception will be held on 4^th July, 6-8pm in London. The event will be marked by the inaugural speech of the new CITMA President, who will set out her vision for CITMA and the profession over the coming two years. Details and registration: here.

Publications

Celebrating diversity

ICC has published a report on Design Protection for Graphical User Interfaces. This report gives guidance to businesses and policy makers, as GUIs and other forms of digital design become increasingly important in the digital economy. Drawing from contributions of experts from different regions, the report reviews the requirements and practices in 24 jurisdictions, including information on both prosecution and enforcement aspects of GUI designs. The report was recently presented to the 39^th session of the WIPO Standing Committee on the Law of Trademarks, Industrial Designs and Geographical Indications.

It may not easy to find good-quality English language resources for Chinese intellectual property practice. NiuYie China IP Blog  seeks to fill this void. It features perhaps the largest collection of China IP articles (approaching 900 pieces), all in English, carefully selected by Dr. Jian Xu, an active blogger on China IP who personally wrote over 150 of the articles.

Initiative

IP Inclusive promotes diversity and inclusion in the IP profession and invites all who consider themselves part of the IP profession to join a campaign to celebrate World Day for Cultural Diversity, on 21 May. More about the initiative: here.

Image credits: fio_even and Sylvia Chuang