International Activities

Trademark Committee: Participation in the 5th TM5 User Meeting

　　On October 29, 2016, the JIPA Trademark Committee participated in a user meeting among the 5 Trademark Offices of Japan, USA, Europe, China, and South Korea (TM5), which was held in Kunshan, China. The purpose of the meeting was to exchange opinions with user groups on the projects and common themes that TM5 had worked on, thereby improving trademark systems and operational practices and boosting user-friendliness and harmonization.
　　The participants include representatives from the trademark offices concerned of the individual countries, namely JPO, USPTO, EUIPO, SAIC, and KIPO, and user groups and trademark firms of the individual countries and regions. The Japanese user groups that participated in the meeting were JPAA and JIPA (Mr. Nakamura, Chairman of the Third Trademark Subcommittee, and Mr. Yoshida, Vice Chairman of the same).
In the Q&A session between the individual offices and the individual groups, the participants asked questions, for example, about countermeasures against bad faith trademark applications in examination and opposition stages, the progress of the image search project of figures, and problems with the current status of the ID LIST project.
　　JIPA expressed its opinions, and asked questions and made requests about the projects that the 5 offices had cooperatively advanced. The details are as follows:

(1) Project for Encouraging Users' Participation
　　JIPA expressed the following opinion on the project for considering users' participation in the TM5 project deeply related to users: "We believe that we, as a Japanese user group, can cooperate in some respects. If there is any plan or program of users' participation in the future, we would really like to participate in it."
　　JPO and EUIPO, which had played a leading role in the project, responded that they would consider cooperating with users, for example, in the Joint Working in next year's INTA Annual Meeting.

(2) TMView Project
　　To further improve the convenience of TMView, a free trademark search database widely available to users, JIPA made the following request to the project for promoting the integration of the trademark data of each country into TMView: "We wonder when the trademark data of China will be reflected. China is a market important for the member companies, and allowing users to search the trademark applications and registered trademarks through TMView will provide them with a great convenience. We would like the trademark data to be promptly reflected."
　　In response, SAIC answered that although there were problems with the translation of goods and services listed in trademark applications, approval procedures were currently in progress in China, and the relevant parties were actively working on this project.
　　Next year's meeting is scheduled to be hosted by EUIPO. The participants are going to continue discussions to harmonize trademark systems. These efforts are very beneficial to companies, and the JIPA Trademark Committee would like to continue cooperation for establishing a globally convenient trademark system in the future as well, while grasping the progress of the discussions.

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