Intellectual property law – trademarks

On March 29 2019, Academy of Justice within its Continuous Training Program on the topic of “Intellectual property law – trademarks”. Purpose of this training was to enhance the judges and prosecutor’s knowledge about the role and importance of the trademark.

First part of the training elaborated on the roles and types of trademark, the trademark holder rights, and legal protection of trademarks. Second part elaborated on ways of registration and loss of the trademark right, legal procedure and their application in protection of the rights that derive from the trademark.

Beginning of this training emphasized that trademark is an important category from all the intellectual property rights that have a significant role in the market, considering that enterprises while conducting their business use the trade mark in order to distinguish their products and services from the other products and services, and for protection of their products.

The training continued to emphasize as well that the trademark is guaranteed with the Law on Trademarks, the Criminal Code and other administrative measures including the customs; nevertheless, in the judicial practice there are many difficulties in application of the legal provisions and provision of effective protection. Number of the disputes in the judicial practices deriving from the trademark area is considerable and a growing tendency.

In the resuming part, it was concluded that international standards set forth in the TRIPS Agreement and the EU Directives, the states shall ensure easily accessed legal remedies, effective and not costly, in order that the holder do not hesitate to request protection of their right by the judiciary. Therefore, for a state to meet these international obligations of this area, is not sufficient to only foresee legislation that sets forth this or that right for the holder, but the legal remedy shall be available and de facto effective and applicable.

In this training participants were provided handouts and theoretical explanations, discussions, case study analysis, elaborated and clarified international and European standards, provisions of the Law on trademarks, and other applicable provisions that regulate this area. Also, this training besides the theoretical explanations presented study cases from the case law, demonstrating merit based decisions in hypothetical cases. All this was accompanied with presentation of the ECtHR case law and the judicial practice in our country.

Beneficiaries of this training were judges from the commercial department of the Prishtina Basic Court and judges and prosecutors from the criminal law area, who handle cases of the financial crimes nature – particularly the trademarks.