Collaboration between eurid and EUIPO

AuthorPaulovics, Ivett
Pages22-33
STUDY ON EVALUATION OF PRACTICES FOR COMBATING SPECULATIVE AND ABUSIVE DOMAIN NAME
REGISTRATIONS
22
6. COLLABORATION BETWEEN EURID AND EUIPO
6.1 About EUIPO
EUIPO (formerly known as the Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market – OHIM) is
an agency of the European Union set up in 1994 and based in Alicante (Spain).50 EUIPO
is responsible for the registration of the European Union trade mark (EUTM) and the
registered Community design (RCD), two unitary IPR valid across the Member States of
the EU.
Every year, it registers an average of 135.000 EUTMs and close to 100.000 RCDs. In
2019 nearly 135.000 EUTMs and 89.000 RCDs were registered. Approximately 15% of
the EUTMs are submitted directly by the applicants and 85% through their
representatives.
The work of EUIPO extends beyond registration to cover the harmonisation of registration
practices for trade marks and designs and the development of common intellectual
property management tools. This work is carried out in tandem with the national and
regional intellectual property offices throughout the EU, user associations and other
institutional partners, with the objective of offering the trade mark and design system
users a similar registration experience, be it at national or at EU level.
Since June 2012, the European Observatory on Infringements of Intellectual Property
Rights (Observatory) was entrusted to the EUIPO. The Observatory brings public and
private stakeholders together in the fight against piracy and counterfeiting. Through the
Observatory, EUIPO is able to actively participate in various areas of IPR other than trade
marks and designs. Among others, the Observatory has carried out a comparative case
study on alternative resolution systems for domain name disputes published in February
2019.51 At the time of drafting of this Study the Observatory is carrying out a study on the
phenomenon of cybersquatting which is expected to be published in t he summer of 2020.
Therefore, the findings of such study could not be considered by the present Study.
Moreover, the EUIPO’s Strategic Plan 2025 envisages initiatives including enhanced
cooperation with company name administrators as well as with domain name registrars
and the .eu Registry in order to combat cybersquatting and other forms of speculative and
abusive registrations of domain names. According to EUIPO this could take the form of
establishing a one-stop-shop for registering business identifiers, including domain names,
in conjunction with any other measure resulting from the evaluation and review by the
Commission of the f unctioning of the .eu and the EUIPO’s collaboration with the .eu
Registry in that regard.52
6.2 Formalisation of the collaboration between EURid and EUIPO
As mentioned above, the Commission promotes the collaboration between the .eu
Registry and EUIPO with a view to combating the speculative and abusive registrations of
50 https://euipo.europa.eu/ohimportal/en/about-euipo
51 https://euipo.europa.eu/tunnel-
web/secure/webdav/guest/document_library/observatory/documents/reports/2019_Comparative_case_study_on_alternat
ive_resolution_systems/Comparative_case_study_on_alternative_resolution_systems_for_domain_name_disputes.pdf
52 https://euipo.europa.eu/tunnel-
web/secure/webdav/guest/document_library/contentPdfs/about_euipo/strategic_plan/strategic-plan-2025_en.pdf

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