[Commons-Law] Article from The Hindu: Madrid System

[Vasuman Khandelwal]

thehindu at web1.hinduonnet.com wrote:Date: Thu, 7 Apr 2005 02:59:25 +0530
From: thehindu at web1.hinduonnet.com
Subject: Article from The Hindu: Sent to you by vasuman

=============================================================
=============================================================
Source: The Hindu (http://www.hinduonnet.com/2005/04/07/stories/2005040704591000.htm)

Opinion
- 
Editorials
  

JOINING THE MADRID SYSTEM




THE GOVERNMENT HAS indicated that it has decided "in principle" that India should join the Madrid System for international registration of trade marks and service marks. It has taken six years for New Delhi to think of a step that should have logically followed the momentous decision it took in 1998 to join the Paris Convention on the protection of industrial property, which lays down minimum legal standards for intellectual property rights (IPRs). The accession to the convention followed a realisation that the country was irreversibly moving towards the grant of product patents for drugs, foods, and agrochemicals as an obligation under the Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement of 1994, and that abstention from the convention had lost its rationale. The Government then made the best out of what was widely perceived as a bad bargain, by acceding to a facility that the convention offers to signatories. This is the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT), under w!
hich nationals and residents of member states can seek patents in more than 120 countries by filing a single application, in a single language, and at low cost, besides accessing a global novelty search. 

But such benefits have not come the way of Indian nationals and residents in the case of trade marks, although India enacted a new trade mark law in 1999 incorporating Paris Convention norms. The hesitation in joining the Madrid System relating to trade marks probably reflected apprehension that accession would benefit chiefly multinational corporations, which own thousands of trade marks. Such a negative attitude to trade marks is incomprehensible in a country where political parties often fight for the right to use names, flags, and symbols that have become popular with the electorate. Trade marks are as important for manufacturers and consumers as flags and poll symbols are for parties and voters. They should be considered necessary elements of the rule of law. The Madrid System governing trade marks offers a convenient procedural mechanism similar to what the PCT does in the case of patents; it is quite indispensable in the era of globalisation. As in the case of the pat!
ent system, decisions on trade mark registration will remain with the national authorities. 

It should also be remembered that while major legal and policy changes that globalisation brings about are as a rule driven by powerful corporates and developed countries, the systemic changes are simultaneously influenced to an extent by the interests of small and medium scale businesses in the same countries as part of the same process. Not surprisingly, the 77-member Madrid System (or Union as it is often called) has been traditionally taken advantage of by European countries where small and medium businesses are engines of innovation and export. More than 95 per cent of users of the system have each registered up to 10 trade marks. The recent accession of the United States and China has added a new dimension to the Madrid System. Since the system offers scope for putting in an application for international registration in the trade mark office of any country where the applicant has a substantial commercial interest or is domiciled, and not necessarily in the trade mark o!
ffice of his own country, failure to join the system encourages Indian businesses to use the trade mark offices of other countries that are members of the system. To counter this trend, India should expedite its accession to the Madrid Union and strengthen its own trade mark registry and professional skills ahead of such accession. 










		
---------------------------------
Yahoo! Messenger
 Show us what our next emoticon should look like. Join the fun.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/commons-law/attachments/20050406/9c437799/attachment.html