WSO and Institute of Singapore Trade Mark Agents Collaborate, March 16

In the first of potentially many joint activities, the WIPO Singapore Office (WSO) and the Institute of Singapore Trade Mark Agents (ISTMA) teamed up to co-organize a webinar entitled Madrid Update and Resolving Disputes Using WIPO Services.

The webinar, which was tailored to meet the needs of ISTMA’s membership, was also opened up to other interested trade mark professionals. This resulted in over 30 trade mark agents from seven different member states join the session.

The webinar provided a refresher on the benefits the Madrid System offers users, as well as a detailed report on the recent legal updates relating to the Madrid System. Other topics in the webinar covered the suite of online tools and resources WIPO has developed to help Madrid applicants, and a summary of alternative dispute resolution (ADR) options for  trademark disputes with the WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Center.

A question and answer session followed the presentations, with discussions focused on arbitration and mediation cases where there were more than two parties, the possibility of conducting an ADR hearing in a language other than English, ensuring a firm’s Madrid notifications all go to the one email address and language considerations relating to an EU designation through Madrid.

ISTMA President, Ms. Murgiana Haq thanked the WSO for its collaboration, noting that this was the first ever training event that ISTMA had co-organized.  She added that it was to hoped that there would be many more collaborations with the WSO in the future.