2019 Annual Report

Guide to intellectual property in the Benelux

What is BOIP’s strategic aim? It is to prepare the organisation for the future and respond to a rapidly changing environment. Sharing our expertise in the field of intellectual property (IP) with entrepreneurs and our partners is central to achieving this aim. Through ever more and closer partnerships, we are working to familiarise entrepreneurs in the Benelux with the complex world of IP.

Committed employees make BOIP stronger

A successful organisation stands or falls with satisfied and committed employees. We are, therefore, investing heavily in our people, including through talent management. The aim here is to add value to the work we do with our customers and partners, by working with an open, expert, inspired and entrepreneurial attitude.

Trademarks

Benelux partnerships

In 2019, BOIP invested heavily in working with various IP partners in the Benelux countries. BOIP’s focus is trademarks and designs. When it comes to promoting IP, we have been working ever more intensively with the national authorities in the three Benelux countries.

Trade secrets campaign

In 2019, together with the FPS Economy in Belgium, BOIP launched a campaign to highlight the importance of trade secrets. BOIP had run the same campaign in the Netherlands in 2018 with the Netherlands Patent Office.

BPP

In March 2019, the Benelux Organisation for Intellectual Property issued a Request for Information for development and maintenance of the Benelux Patent Platform (BPP). The three Benelux countries use the BPP to discharge their duties in the field of patents.

Cooperation with EUIPO

In 2019, BOIP worked with EUIPO and the EU member states on several projects as part of the European Intellectual Property Network (EUIPN). There were, for example, mutual consultations on how to handle the new trademark types that are part of the Convergence Programme (CP11) and BOIP took part in the working group tasked with upgrading TMview, resulting in a new version of TMview being rolled out.
At the initiative of EUIPO, BOIP also took part in the IT Security Network for Intellectual Property Offices. The network’s goal is to take information security to a higher level.

Cooperation with Darts-ip

In 2019, we entered into a partnership with Darts-ip. The Darts-ip tool is based on artificial intelligence and, by harnessing the technology, BOIP is improving the function to search device marks in the Trademarks Register. The tool enables a user to search through all Benelux, EU and international trademarks that are valid in the Benelux. The tool, together with the rebuilt Trademarks Register, is expected to be launched in 2020.

BOIP is continuing to develop as an online service provider. Our customers need effective, highly available applications and so we are continually making improvements to them. We monitor our applications constantly and so are aware at all times whether they are available and can ensure that they stay available. Our customers must be able to use well-functioning applications with high availability. You can read more about our most important IT projects in 2018 below. In 2019, we further optimised our online services, worked on further automation of internal work processes and on IT service continuity and implemented organisational improvements in the IT department itself.

• We utilise the results of customer visits and customer surveys when designing and improving our applications. In 2019, an internal working group was set up to do just this, in a structured fashion, to better meet our customers’ wishes.
• The Benelux Trademarks Register was completely rebuilt and offers a number of new functionalities. The new Register is expected to go live in 2020.
• We developed a new Trademarks Register and website for CaribIE.

After implementing fee changes on 1 January 2019, we turned our attention to addressing the legal changes ushered in by the new EU Trademark Directive, which took force in the Benelux on 1 March 2019. Transposition of the Directive resulted in a number of changes to legal procedures at BOIP, such as extension on the absolute and relative grounds for refusal.

In 2019, for the first time, BOIP took decisions in cancellation procedures. BOIP now handles appeals cases in their entirety before the Benelux Court of Justice when it comes to decisions to refuse. In 2019, the first decision on appeal in a refusal case was taken by the Benelux Court of Justice.