EEIA welcomed Nicolas Vigneron and Alessandro Corrado from the European Union Intellectual Property Office in Alicante.

We discussed possible collaboration for the promotion of EUIPO’s new tools for SMEs, via webinars, newsletters, exhibitions’ websites. Furthermore, EEIA stressed the need to enshrine the modern definition of professional exhibitions into the EU Design directive when it will be revised. The aim is that EUIPO can also accept design registrations based on Exhibition Priority Certificates as do all the National Patent Offices. The Exhibition Certificate is an important tool for SMEs to protect their products from being copied by activating the Unregistered Community Design and allows for retroactive registration of IP with the date of the exhibition.

You can download the Media Release here.