On September 14, the sixth training on intellectual property issues was held for Latvian and European judges, employees of the judicial system, as well as professionals in the field of intellectual property. The seminar focused on the issues of trademark protection and copyright. For the second year in a row, the seminar took place online at European scale and brought together more than 360 registered participants. Especially active were representatives from Lithuania, Bulgaria, and Moldova.
The seminar was opened by Baiba Graube, Acting Director of the Latvian Patent Office, who expressed her satisfaction saying:
"I am convinced that we move in the right direction to strengthen the field of intellectual property protection."
Emphasizing the importance of international initiatives, Eun-Joo Min, Director of the Judicial Institute of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), noted:
“The judiciary and all intellectual property professionals have to be alive and respond to the evolutions taking place in society, as the static IP statutes are applied and interpreted to cases that are dynamic reflections of socio-economic and technological changes of the day. And this is not limited to the territorial borders as intellectual property permeates such borders.”
The seminar speakers were internationally recognized lecturers and experts in the field of intellectual property rights from the World Intellectual Property Organization, the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO), Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland. The seminar was moderated by Dace Liberte, Chairperson of the Latvian Industrial Property Board of Appeal. The key issues covered at the seminar were the legal framework of civil liability in the Latvian Trademark Law; the impact of trademark reputation in civil and criminal trademark infringement cases; EUIPO and CJEU case law regarding the Nice Classification; litigation of disputes between collective management organizations and users of works; and copyright and artificial intelligence.
The last part of the seminar was devoted to the discussion on liability of Internet service providers for copyright infringement, covering in detail the judgment of the Lithuanian Court of Appeal in the LINKOMANIJA case and the judgment of the Cracow Court of Appeal in the case of a Polish Internet service provider. A representative of the Latvian Supreme Court spoke about the experience of the Latvian court system in this area.
About the seminar:
The annual training was organized in close cooperation with WIPO and EUIPO with the aim of providing high-quality professional development and further training for judicial staff, with a special focus on intellectual property protection, which could further improve the quality of judicial decisions and provide for qualitative work in the EU legal system.
Taking into account the interest and high appreciation expressed by the seminar audience, the Patent Office, in close cooperation with the leading institutions in the field of intellectual property, plans to further develop the initiative of training judges and judicial staff in intellectual property issues.
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