The Advanced Training Course for International Registration and Protection of Trademarks co-hosted by WIPO and Renmin University of China (RUC) was successfully held in Suzhou Campus of RUC on July 13 and 14, 2015. The seminar was jointly organized by RUC Academy of IP and China Office of WIPO. It was co-organized by Beijing Sunshine Intellectual Property and Legal Development Foundation (hereafter “SSIP”). RUC and WIPO lend great support to the organization of the training course. Professor Chen Yulu, President of RUC, and Ms. Wang Binying, Deputy Director General of the WIPO jointly issued a certificate for the participants who complete the course. Mr. Chen Hongbing, Director of the China Office of WIPO, and Prof. Liu Chuntian, Dean of Academy of IP, RUC and President of China Intellectual Property Law Association attended the opening ceremony and delivered speeches.
A number of experienced experts on trademark law attended the training course and gave wonderful lectures, including Mr. An Qinghu, Vice President of the China Trademark Association, Ms. Tao Junying, Senior Consultant of the Madrid Registration Office, WIPO, Ms. Li Xiaolan, Deputy General Manager of Shenzhen Talent Trademark & Patent & Copyright Law Office, Mr. Giulio Matrini, Attorneys from Italian IP Skill Law Firm and chairman of the Madrid System Subcommittee of the International Trademark Association, Mr. Wen Xue, Deputy Director of the International Registration Office of the Trademark Office of the State Administration for Industry and Commerce.
The advanced lecture was hosted by Ms. Zhang Junqin, Project Officer of the China Office, WIPO. More than 160 participants attended the training course, including practitioners from nearly 100 trademark agencies, law firms, corporate intellectual property departments, universities and related government agencies from more than 10 provinces and cities nationwide.
Professor Liu Chuntian delivered a speech. He first introduced the history of exchanges and cooperation between WIPO and RUC. The Intellectual Property Teaching and Research Center of RUC, as the first teaching and research institution for IP higher education in China, was established 30 years ago with the support and promotion of WIPO. Over the past 30 years, the cooperation between WIPO and China go smoothly. And WIPO has also had an increasingly active and extensive exchange with RUC. Several WIPO Directors have served as guest professors at RUC, and now Mr. Francis Gurry, the General Director of WIPO, is an honorary doctor of RUC. Professor Liu Chuntian further introduced the history of the IP system in China. He observes that there was a change of the use of expression in legal study, from “foreign-related” to “international.” He believed that China is neither a closed society, nor a partially open society. It should be fully integrated into international competition and cooperation and become a member of the international community. This training course is an effort by the WIPO China Office and the RUC Academy of IP to help Chinese enterprises go global.
The training course began after the brief opening ceremony. Mr. An Qinghu, Vice President of China Trademark Association, gave a wonderful speech on the following four topics: “China's Economic and Foreign Trade Development Overview,” “Overview of China's Trademark and Trademark International Registration,” “China: Trademark Power” and “Responsibility of China’s Trademark Agency.” With extremely detailed data and elaborate charts, Mr. An Qinghu showed the situation of China’s economy and trade with foreign countries as well as the data regarding trademark registration and international registration since the beginning of the reform and opening up policy. Admitting the outstanding progress made in the past decades, he pointed out the shortcomings of China’s foreign trade structure and the problems in international registration of trademarks, especially the world ranking of China’s international registration in Madrid system, compared to the scale of China’s economy and foreign trade. He believes that there are two reasons for this. First, the quality of export goods is not good enough. Second, businessman are still not aware of the importance of trademark international registration. In addition, this may be because trademark agencies seldom use the Madrid system when they try to register a trademark abroad. In the end, Mr. An Qinghu introduce the development of China’s trademark agencies. He pointed out that trademark agencies should serve businesses with good faith, and while serving the economy and market competition, they should have a wider vision, i.e. a nationwide perspective.
Ms. Tao Junying, Senior Consultant of the Madrid Registration Office, WIPO, gave a speech on the topic “The Madrid System for the International Registration of Trademarks”. After a brief introduction to WIPO, the trademark system and different ways of international registration of trademarks, she introduced in detail the running of the Madrid system and how to make use of it. She provided a framework for the attendees to understand the Madrid system by introducing the development of the Madrid system, its legal framework, its division of functions, its basic concepts and principles, as well as the formal requirements for international registration, the scope and members of the Madrid system and its practical value for trademark owners. Further, she introduced the practical steps of the Madrid system, including application fees, application procedures, and procedures for change of trademark, etc., with her extensive experience in the work related to the Madrid system. Finally, she also gave an update on the development of the Madrid system, and provided attendees with the ways and means to contact and use the Madrid-registered services maintained by WIPO. And she expressed WIPO’s hope to provide better service for the world.
In the afternoon of July 13th, two experienced experts in the area of Madrid registration from Europe and China respectively gave wonderful lectures. Ms. Li Xiaolan, Deputy General Manager of Shenzhen Talent Trademark & Patent & Copyright Law Office (Talent Office), first gave a speech on the topic “The Practice of Madrid International Trademark System”. Her speech focused on three topics: “the challenge of the Madrid system to trademark agencies,” “15-years’ practice of Talent Office in the Madrid system,” and “outlook of trademark agency in the post-Madrid era.” She pointed out that the Madrid system poses a major challenge to the profitability of trademark agencies due to the simplification of register procedures, the significant increase in the number and quality of member states, and the transparency and low cost of the fees. Further, she introduced how the Talent Office adapt itself to all these challenges, including make their prices more attractive to increase the number of clients, using skills to increase the number of registered countries to increase the profit, making good use of the Madrid database to provide value-added consultant service, providing legal service of trademark review, opposition and data monitoring, enhancing connection with agencies abroad to increase the number of foreign clients, and making good use of government’s policy to promote IP funds to assist the development of enterprises. In sum, she believed that in the post-Madrid era, trademark agencies should change their model of business, focusing more on professional services to their clients, focusing on WIPO’s new policies, having more interaction with WIPO, so as to provide better service to their clients and to improve their profitability.
Mr. Giulio Matrini, lawyer of Italy IP Skill Law Firm, delivered a speech in English about Foreign counterpart’s practice and suggestions on Chinese users of Madrid System. Mr. Wei Zhengang, a member of AIIC who has extensive experience in the field of simultaneous interpretation in English and Chinese, especially in law-related fields, has made wonderful translations. Mr. Matrini first pointed out that the Madrid system is an important way of international registration of trademarks, but it is not the only way. This approach has its own advantages and disadvantages. For example, it depends heavily on the basic application of the country. The limitation of the application language is also an important issue in this system. On this basis, he gave a detailed introduction to the key issues in the practice of national basic application, regional choices in application, types of application and service. As an agent with rich experience in the industry, especially for the relevant legal systems of the European Union, his analysis of the advantages and disadvantages of the EU application and the application for a single designated EU member state is particularly deep. In his view, the considerations include not only the coverage of EU applications, different review criteria, different application fees, but also the choices of enterprises themselves. At the same time, enterprises and agencies should strive to master the application skills of the Madrid system. Finally, he pointed out the complexity of the Madrid system and its similarities with other trademark registration methods. He emphasized the significance of professionals' joint efforts to improve the trademark registration system.
On the morning of July 14th, Mr. Wen xue, deputy director of international Registration Office of the Trademark Office of the State Administration for Industry and Commerce, gave a speech entitled International Registration of Madrid Trademarks. His speech included Introduction of Madrid System, Implementation of Madrid System in China, How to Handle Madrid International Registration Application, Introduction of Other Business, Latest Development of Madrid System and Useful Information. In the introduction of Madrid system, he introduced the basic situation of international trademark registration, Madrid Agreement Concerning the International Registration of Marks and Protocol Relating to the Madrid Agreement Concerning the International Registration of Marks and their comparison, the Madrid Union, the purpose and characteristics of Madrid system and the basic content of the International Bureau. On the implementation of the Madrid System in China, he introduced China's efforts in joining the system, such as laws, organizational safeguards and showed related data. In terms of how to handle Madrid's application for international registration, he introduced in detail about the basic concepts, process, application qualification, submission materials, cost calculation, formal examination of the Trademark Office, the issuance of the designated Party, the reply method of the notice of temporary rejection, and several dates of international registration. After that, he introduced other business contents such as international objection, international registration transferring to national registration, international registration replacing national registration, etc. In terms of the latest development of the Madrid system, he introduced the new contents of Madrid's electronic communication, additional application language, commodity and service database, etc. Finally, based on his rich experience, he has brought a comprehensive and detailed information channel about the Madrid system.
In particular, this seminar has arranged Q&A session after each speech. Students actively raised many professional issues regarding the content of the speaker in the report and their problems about the international registration of trademarks. The speakers patiently and meticulously gave answers to these questions which received wide acclaim from the participants. During the coffee break and lunch time, the majority of students also seize the opportunity to communicate with the speakers, expressing their strong desire to learn and use the Madrid system more actively.
At the closing ceremony of the seminar, All students who successfully enrolled and completed the training were awarded a certificate of completion jointly issued by Renmin University of China and the World Intellectual Property Organization. Finally, all the guests and the participants took a group photo at RUC (Suzhou Campus), the seminar was successfully concluded.
The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) is a global forum working for intellectual property policy, services, information and cooperation. As a specialized organization of the United Nations with 188 members, it provides assistance to enable these members to establish a harmonious and balanced intellectual property legal environment to meet the development needs of the global community. The China Office of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) was established in Beijing on July 10th 2014 to support the work of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and its intellectual property products and services.
Renmin University of China is an important founder of China's intellectual property legal system and a major pioneer in the discipline of intellectual property law in China. The Intellectual Property Teaching and Research Center of Renmin University of China is the first intellectual property academic institution in China. the Intellectual Property Teaching and Research Center and Intellectual Property Academy of Renmin University of China provide suggestions for intellectual property education and academic research, personnel training, legislative reform, and foreign academic exchanges. They also made active efforts in publicity.
WIPO CREATIVITY AWARD was awarded to The Intellectual Property Teaching and Research Center in October, 2008. This seminar is another national-oriented advanced seminar on intellectual property rights held jointly by the People's University of China, the Intellectual Property Teaching and Research Center of Renmin University of China, Intellectual Property Academy of Renmin University of China and the World Intellectual Property Organization after the cooperation of the National Advanced Seminar on Copyright and Appearance Design of Intellectual Property Teachers in Universities. It is an important content of the cooperation agreement signed with the World Intellectual Property Organization in 2014. The seminar has been highly concerned and unanimously recognized by intellectual property colleagues, especially the vast number of students, in terms of preparations, conference organization, lecture content, and service after the seminar. Students and some colleagues who failed to participate in the seminar have expressed their expectations for more participation in the follow-up research activities. In the future, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), the China Office of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and Intellectual Property Academy of Renmin University of China will continue to cooperate sincerely and make efforts to contribute to the construction and practical progress of China's intellectual property system.
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