SME EUROPE Working Breakfast on “How safe are Trademarks in the EU? SMEs Perspectives for an Open Debate”
On Thursday, 5th of November 2013 the SME Europe of the European People´s Party (EPP) organized an event on “How safe are Trademarks in the EU? SMEs Perspectives for an Open Debate”.
The discussion was opened by Salvador SEDÓ I ALABART MEP, EP Committee on Industry, Research and Energy, Vice-President of SME Europe of the EPP, who introduced the participants and the subject of the Working Breakfast. He stressed the importance for the preservation of Trademark Rights in the European Union, with an emphasis on the challenges of SMEs. Hence, The SME´s are often described as being in a disadvantage where the protection of their trademark rights are concerned. Large companies like Google prevent trademark erosion by aggressively fighting against it with large legal teams around the globe, while SMEs usually do not have a sufficient budget and staff to do that. The laws of the European Union are not necessarily inadequate, but must be adapted to the situation of SMEs to secure the competitive advantage of the European Union in the future.
The event continued with the keynote speech delivered by Dawn FRANKLIN, Chair of the Trademark Committee of the European Brands Association (AIM). She highlighted that trademarks are a fundamental legal basis for businesses to build brands and protect reputation. Moreover, brands benefit society through increased tax revenues, employment, consumer choice and fair competition. She mentioned that areas for improvement in the trade mark systems affect all users, regardless of size – and that the concerns that SMEs express are common to those of larger companies. To support the Intellectual Property Rights for SMEs, an improvement in the national education curricula is needed to increase understanding of the importance and value of trademarks, branding and copyright.
Dr. Egon ENGIN-DENIZ, CMS Reich-Rohrwig Hainz, emphasized the challenges the companies have to undertake to prevent trademarks from becoming common names. Starting with the present definition in the Trade Mark Directive, he explained the objective characteristics for a trade mark to become a common name, mainly due to acts or inactivity of the trade mark proprietor. Using an example, the case of the Austrian company backaldrin (C 409/12), he illuminated the risk to a brand by the end users/consumers, who often tend to use (especially well-known) marks as terms for the products. This can result in artificial facilitation of revocation of (often well-known) trademarks, which – being intellectual property – enjoy fundamental rights protection.
Luc HENDRICKX, Director Enterprise Policy and External Relations, European Association of Craft, Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (UEAPME) stressed that more emphasis regarding trademarks should be put on the work of the business organizations and that more awareness should be created about this topic among SMEs.
Ilias KONTEAS, Senior Adviser for intellectual property law and trademarks, BUSINESSEUROPE, mentioned the importance of the harmonization process between member states and the enhanced cooperation at all levels in order to level the playing field between all actors involved in the trademarks debate.
The debate ended with an active questions and answers session.
Downloads
Presentation ENGIN-DENIZ
Presentation FRANKLIN
Gallery “How safe are Trademarks in the EU? SMEs Perspectives for an Open Debate”