Washington DC.. — — This year’s International Trademark Association meeting, held in the capital from April 30th to May 4th, brought together intellectual property lawyers from around the world, including the war-torn Ukraine, to protect NFTs, metaverses and customs from new legislation. And counterfeiting.
Barbara Kolsun, New York’s leading fashion industry lawyer and director of the Cardozo School of Law’s FAME Center (Fashion, Art, Media and Entertainment), is on hold for fashion sustainability and social accountability in New York. I was at INTA to participate in the panel about. Activity. The bill, sponsored by Democratic Senator Alessandra Biaggi, is on the Commission. If enacted, fashion retailers and manufacturers doing business in New York and earning more than $ 100 million annually will “map the supply chain, disclose the environmental and social impact of their activities, and We need to set goals to improve those impacts, “according to the bill’s sponsor memo.
The new law “try fashion,” Korsun said in a good way. “The fashion industry was mostly self-regulatory and had a lot of impetus for tightening regulations.” In the end, she said, the law allows companies to work harder on supply chain transparency and “enforce. It will require more people to be hired to manage it, but that’s happening anyway. “
The organization reported that the INTA had 6,700 registrants from 130 countries this year. Although fewer than the pre-pandemic rally (11,500 IP experts attended the meeting in 2019), participants are eager to resume face-to-face networking. It was like. INTA staff and CEO Etienne Sanz de Acedo said he planned to hold the event “on a compressed schedule, what would normally be done in a year, in four months.” He also said the group worked hard to “close the gap between live and virtual.”
Floriane Codevelle, a lawyer for Paris-based intellectual property company Casalonga, attended several seminars related to NFTs, an emerging legal discipline with opportunities and risks that many brands have not yet considered.
She stated that panelists explicitly mention NFTs in trademark coexistence or license agreements and recommend that they develop mandatory guidelines for their use. “For example, we need to make sure that NFTs are used in markets that have a good reputation and are consistent with the values of the brand or IP owner,” she said. “We also need to make sure that the brand retains all relevant intellectual property rights as long as the third party creates the NFT.”
Other topics included registering dot-nft and dot-bitcoin domain names to fend off web infringers, and applying for class 9 trademark rights.
Sylvie Benoliel-Claux, founder of Benoliel Avocats in Paris and chairman of the French Trademark and Design Law Practitioners Association, had a long discussion with a Portuguese lawyer at INTA on the “issue of originality” of copyright law. Said that. In response to the European Court of Justice’s decision on Cofemel vs. G-Star Raw, the two fashion labels fought each other in a protracted dispute over the design displayed on clothing.
Regarding NFTs, Benoliel-Claux said the legal chat touched upon the free use of the artist’s brand trademark in the Metaverse. “There was talk about what rights owners can do to ensure the best protection of the brand, but also the fact that artists are claiming their creative freedom.” She said. APRAM, along with INTA, will host a conference on NFTs in Paris on June 22nd.
Gian Paolo Di Santo, a partner of Pavia & Ansaldo in Milan and a frequent worker with luxury and fashion clients, has many INTA participants working with international responders on parallel imports and counterfeit products. Said that.
He said the gray market is reviving due to differences in the structure of the retail market, although legitimate products are sold outside the licensed channels, damaging the brand’s distribution network. .. In Italy, judges consider omission to be consent, so time is important when seeking legal action from unauthorized retailers, he said.
Disant also said that the infringer has registered his own trademark, but is carefully imitating the trade dress of a high quality brand so that consumers cannot easily distinguish between the original and the counterfeit, increasingly sophisticated. He said he was aware of the form of brand infringement.
“Italy has major counterfeit operations, not all of them flying under radar,” he said. “But the good thing in Italy is that we have a very efficient injunction system that allows us to quickly block those goods in the event of an emergency. Next, to claim damages. Must prove their claim to the proposal. “In addition to the actual damages, the brand can be sought to regain the interests of the infringer under Italian industrial property law.
In 1992, the IP companies Mikhailyuk, Sorokolat & Partners Anna Mikhailyuk and Elena Koliedina, headquartered in Kharkiv, Ukraine, relocated most of the staff of about 200 companies to Ivano-Frankovsk in the western part of the country and bombarded in the east. ..
“We had to embrace a new reality and change our lives,” said Koliedina, who has 10 years of experience in IP enforcement across the territory of the former Soviet Union.She says her work “survives, remains optimistic and empowers her to do her best to support my country, my economy, my family, etc. I am under bombing 3 Spend a week, work in remote areas, sometimes [the] The basement, sometimes on the 3rd floor of my apartment. “
Koliedina feels that the Ukrainian Intellectual Property Institute, which handles patent and trademark registrations, is still in operation, and she and her colleagues continue to work, “we are fighting in the field of IP.” I added that.
Cynthia Martens, a former correspondent for WWD in Milan, works for the Nilsson Law Group at PLLC in New York.
