Practitioners share hopes for Campinos’s replacement
Christian Archambeau’s succession of António Campinos as executive director of the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) has been well received by practitioners, who hope he will be a “safe pair of hands” amid Brexit turmoil.
The Permanent Representatives Committee, which is responsible for preparing the work of the European Council, voted to recommend Archambeau as executive director on Friday, July 13. His appointment is expected to be formalised in an upcoming meeting of the Council.
Chris McLeod, partner at Elkington and Fife, said that although he has not met Archambeau, he doubts that Archambeau would have reached his current position or been proposed as a successor to Campinos “if he did not deserve it”.
Avi Freeman, partner at Beck Greener, added that the proposed executive director “seems to be a safe pair of hands”.
Archambeau has served as acting executive director of the EUIPO since Campinos left to take up the role of president of the European Patent Office on July 2, following Benoît Battistelli’s departure. Archambeau had served as deputy executive director of the EUIPO for more than seven years.
The leader of the EUIPO will need to address challenges such as Brexit, which continues to present a number of questions for those in the IP sphere and will need attention, according to Freeman.
On Brexit, McLeod explained, “the key issues from a UK perspective are the cloning of registered trademarks and designs onto the UK register, pending applications and disputes, and continued rights of representation”.
In March, the European Commission’s and UK government’s draft agreement said that owners of EU trademarks will have their rights protected in the UK, but a White Paper released by the UK government last week left the question of whether UK trademark attorneys will be able to represent clients at the EUIPO unanswered.
Pieter Van Den Broecke, partner at Linklaters, said he hopes that Archambeau will put into practice the “compromise-making skills which are required to settle discussions”.
Freeman similarly wants the future director to “play a constructive role” in the Brexit negotiations.
Van Den Broecke added that there are a few issues facing the EUIPO, in addition to dealing with EU-wide rights in a post-Brexit world. For example, there is increased pressure to lower the cost of IP protection and to make the EUIPO’s administrative decisions “more predictable”, he said.
Another area for improvement centres on timing.
McLeod claimed that delays are now “customary in any matters which require human intervention” at the EUIPO, and trademark oppositions with a relatively simple basis can take more than six weeks to be processed, leading to legal uncertainty which needs to be addressed.
Freeman hopes that Archambeau will also continue to build and develop the EUIPO’s design function, which can be “so important to start-ups in the technology and engineering fields”.
Currently, “EUIPO designs often feel like they play second string to trademarks”, he said.
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