President’s report 2010-2011

Last year has been another very busy and fruitful period for ECTA. First of all I would stress the work of our committees. The committees are the heart of the Association and they have been very productive and thus benefitted the trade mark and IPR community.

One of our main focus areas this year was still the Study on the overall functioning of the European trade mark system to which we contributed intensively and as a result ECTA was the most quoted and referred-to Association in the report of the Max Planck Institute. Hopefully the Commission will take into consideration the views put forward in our various position papers. There is of course still a lot of work to be done when the package of the new legislation is released. We should in particular thank the Law Committee, chaired by Fabio Angelini, without the support of which we would not have had such a success.

Another important matter last year was our contribution to the projects of the Cooperation Fund. We have been able to provide qualified volunteers concerning the projects of package 1, which was much appreciated. We hope that the candidates we have proposed for the projects of package 2 will also be accepted in order to reinforce our relationship with the Cooperation Fund and OHIM.

A third matter of importance was the ICANN and its new gtLD initiative which raised a lot of issues with regard to the protection of trade mark owners. That is why our Internet Committee, chaired by Andrew Mills, has produced a significant number of position papers. He has also joined forces with the Cyberspace team of our sister association MARQUES.

In addition, we have maintained a good relationship with the other associations national and international, dedicated to the improvement of the functioning of the trade mark system. We regard them, not as our competitors, but our sister associations.

We have continued our work with OHIM and national offices in the context of the Study and in the form of round tables aimed at better understanding the relationship between the CTM and the national systems. In this regard, ECTA arranged round tables in Scandinavia, former Eastern European countries (now Member States of the EU), and the Baltic countries.

We also had a most productive year together with WIPO. In addition to our traditional visit to the offices in Geneva, we were received by Mr. Gurry, Director General of WIPO and his deputy Ms. Wang Binying. We have arranged workshops together with national associations on international registration of designs. Workshops were held in London and Rome and others are planned for Paris, Hamburg and Spain.

We have raised awareness of the tremendous work of our Committees by notably establishing a press network, publishing press releases whenever possible.

The work of our staff is essential for the effective functioning of our Association. I would therefore like to extend my warm thanks to Anne-Laure Covin, our Legal Co-Ordinator, Cathy van Vuuren our Administrative Secretary, and Petra Haenitsch our Administrative Assistant.

Annick Mottet Haugaard
ECTA President