WIPO Members Discussing Industrial Designs, Geographical Indications This Week

World Intellectual Property Organization member governments are meeting this week to try to advance a proposal to convene a high-level negotiation for a procedural treaty on industrial designs. They also are discussing how geographical indications should be addressed in the committee on trademarks, industrial designs and geographical indications.

The 33rd session of the WIPO Standing Committee on the Law of Trademarks, Industrial Designs and Geographical Indications (SCT) is taking place from 16-20 March. The agenda [pdf] is here.

On the proposed design law treaty, delegates have been working on draft articles [pdf] and draft regulations [pdf] for several sessions of the SCT, but the decision to convene a diplomatic conference (treaty negotiation) has lapsed several times. The pending issue was whether to include technical assistance in the text of the treaty as an article, or to leave it outside of the text.

Then at the last session of the SCT in November, the African Group introduced a new paragraph on disclosure requirement to be added to the draft articles, much to the discontent of proponents of the treaty (IPW, WIPO, 27 November 2015). Discussions are continuing on both issues, according to sources.

Industrial designs relate to the ornamental or aesthetic aspect of an item, and may consist of shapes, patterns, lines or colours.

Also under discussion this week is a proposal [pdf] by the United States on a possible geographical indications filing system. The US also proposed that the secretariat undertake a survey of existing national GI regimes.

Another proposal [pdf] by the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Moldova, Spain, and Switzerland, joined this week by Portugal, suggests extending the scope of the WIPO Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) to country names and geographical indications. It also asks that the WIPO secretariat prepare a working document presenting the “difficulties of protection of geographical indications against wrongful registration and use of domain names with a view to adopt a joint recommendation to revise the ICANN [Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers] Application Guidebook.”

The SCT is also expected to consider a proposal [pdf] by Jamaica to adopt a joint recommendation on the protection of country names in particular against conflicting marks, conflicting business identifiers and conflicting domain names.

Today, a side event [pdf] on the protection of country names and nation branding was organised by the secretariat. In particular, the side event presented a possible approach to valuating and ranking “nation brands” and presented some legal issues coming out of the interface between country names and individually owned trademark rights.

 

Image Credits: Catherine Saez