Brussels, 23/09/2010 (Agence Europe) - On Tuesday 21 September, European Commissioner for the Internal Market Michel Barnier addressed MEPs and defended the Community mark against decisions made by national trademark offices which attempt to challenge the unitary nature of the European Community trade mark. In a case taken to the Court in The Hague, the Benelux Office for intellectual property disputes the fact that use of the Community mark in a single EU country is enough to prove the serious usefulness of the Community mark. Barnier declared that “until now, the rule is that any serious use of the Community trademark by the user is sufficient, irrespective of the place of use in the Community. This has always been considered by users as one of its main advantages. This rule is coherent with the unitary nature of the Community mark. It is also coherent with the very principles of the internal market”. According to the commissioner, any new restriction on the use of the Community mark could have “serious consequences” on the fight against counterfeiting and access for small and medium-sized enterprises to this kind of intellectual copyright protection. He added that “at this stage, we are confident that the national jurisdictions will not confirm these decisions, which appear to us not to comply with the unitary nature of the Community mark and the principles of the single market”.
In a reply to a question put to him by EUROPE, Wubbo de Boer, the president of the Trademark and Designs Registration Office of the European Union (OHIM), gave a warm welcome to the position taken by the commissioner. He affirmed that “casting doubt (on the unitary nature of the mark) will not help in the fight against counterfeiting, especially at Europe's external borders and it will be the SMEs in particular who will suffer from this”. He said that it was very unlikely that there would be a confirmation by the courts on the decisions taken by the national offices. He suggested that there might be a demand made for a recommendation by the European Court of Justice. De Boer, who is leaving his post at the end of the month, said that he was not very worried by OHIM's continued accumulation of financial reserves, although the European agency in Alicante was not pursuing any profitable objectives. The treasury was set up in 1996 and now stands at almost €400 million. De Boer explained that they needed to find a solution that took into account users' interests and expressed his astonishment at the poor support given by the political community on this question. Pointing to the operational results of the office, he suggested a reduction of €800 for each of the taxes received when registering a trademark and renewing it after ten years. Expected out in the autumn, a study by the Commission on the functioning of the European Community trademark, will perhaps propose possibilities for using resources from the Alicante treasury. (M.B./transl.fl)