By a request from the Arab Society for the Protection of Industrial Property (ASPIP), Talal Abu-Ghazaleh International (TAGI) and Abu-Ghazaleh for Intellectual Property (AGIP), a number of trademarks registrants from the UAE, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Jordan, Tunisia and Egypt, participated in a seminar on industrial and intellectual property protection.
The seminar took place in collaboration with the German Patents Office and was held in Munich.
Participating at the event was Mr. Talal Abu-Ghazaleh, ASPIP’s Chairman and Chairman of TAGI. He said: “It is fortunate that the timing of this seminar coincides with the annual meetings of the Talal Abu-Ghazaleh Group and its five firms.” He added that ASPIP, in collaboration with AGIP, is working seriously in order to offer its services to all Arab countries through setting legislations and laws specific to protection of individual ownership, patents and copyrights, in addition to training cadres capable of implementing these laws.
Abu-Ghazaleh further stated that in order for the Arab world to be able to meet the challenge of dealing with modern technology and transferring it to the Arab region, it is necessary for it to develop laws and procedures related to intellectual property (IP) and strictly implement them. This is because “this issue encourages many advanced industrial companies to deal with numerous nations via agreement to the transfer of their advanced technology. Further, this encourages import and export,” according to Abu-Ghazaleh.
He elaborated that it is necessary to deal in a strict manner with trademark violations.
Afterwards, Professor Eric Hoyser, President of the German Patents Office, talked about the office’s activities, its establishment, the procedures of dealing with trademarks and patents, and how to grant licenses of marks. He then called on registrants and participants to visit the office, to get a practical idea on its methods of work and how it operates.
Following Mr. Hoyser, Dr. Jobel discussed procedures of granting trademarks through practical examples and a comparison of names vs. trademarks and the extent to which the two can be similar. Mr. Bockmayer presented the legal issues relating to trademarks and the disputes that can arise from similarities in names or drawings/images. He also talked about cases of imitation and related violations, stating that these cases can be resolved in or out of courts, and how the protection law was originally founded in order to simplify the technology transfer and commercial processes.
On the second day of the seminar, the participants visited the German Patents Office where they were received by Professor Hoyser and a number of office workers. There they reviewed the operations of the office’s departments.