We were happy to have been visited by Mrs. Karen Lim, Mr. Charles Weigell, Mr. Ashford Tucker, and Mrs. Carole Klinger from the firm of Fross Zelnick Lehrman & Zissu, P.C. Our first guests since relocating our office, they provided us with useful information about how to choose goods/services and avoid additional surcharges and fees recently adopted by the USPTO, as well as how to choose trademark usage samples more likely to be accepted for declaration or renewal.

Today we had the pleasure of hosting Ms. Crystal J. Chen, Mr. Sheng-Fang Liu, Mr. Tommy Po-Ping Chiu from the firm of TSAI, LEE & CHEN (Taiwan). They gave us a presentation on several court decisions in non-use cancellation actions concerning the trademarks “Tokyu” and “CROWN” and explained the Taiwan practice and legal standards with respect to what constitutes the use of trademarks. We also discussed recent examination trends concerning design applications as well as the temporary postponement of plans to abolish the current appeal system.

Today we had the pleasure of hosting Ms. Jiang Ling and Ms. Vivian Yang from the firm of King & Wood Mallesons (China). We discussed several recent trends in China IP, among them examination standards with respect to similarity of trademarks, recent success rates for oppositions and cancellation actions, things to consider when filing under third-party names, etc. They also provided us with useful information about how the legal environment is improving and how rights that may not necessarily be protected by trademark registration may still be protected via other avenues such as the Unfair Competition Act or even Copyright Laws.

Today Mr. Kohji Suzuki and Mrs. Jamie-Lynn Kraft from the Canadian firm of Smart & Biggar visited us here in Tokyo. They provided us with the most recent numbers on examination wait times, which CIPO has been working to improve. They also provided us with more information about the recent revision to the Charter of the French Language policy implemented in Quebec, particularly on how that relates to translation requirements for trademarks and product packaging.

Mr. Joan Salvà, a managing director with the Spanish IP firm PONTI& PARTNERS visited us this week. He was kind enough to update us on some recent changes involving non-use cancellations and nullity actions in Spain, as well as giving us a brief presentation on recent cases of note within the EU. We also discussed Japan’s recent adoption of a letter-of-consent system, a well as how our two patent offices tend to differ with respect to the registrability of single and two-letter trademarks.