Last night the IPKat attended Professor Graeme Dinwoodie’s contribution to the Queen Mary IPRI series on the impact of globalisation on trade mark law. Professor Dinwoodie’s focus was on the potential conflict between territoriality and globalisation. To this end, he identified two reasons for territoriality, which lead to different outcomes with regard to the various places in trade mark law where the issue arises.
Intrinsic territoriality exists where the reason for territoriality is inherent in the type of trade mark rule itself while political territoriality exists where, as a matter of political fact, it would be very difficult to enforce trade mark law outside the territory. He then proceeded to show how the three main sources of the increased global impact of trade marks (expanded tourism, immigration and the existence of multinational corporations) can fit into this model, by reference to the US case law on the subject.
The IPKat looks forward to future seminars in the series. The issue is one which is certainly due for serious study. He hopes that the series will consider a number of fundamental issues that (he thinks) need to be addressed which analysing the relationship between trade marks and globalisation:
- What does globalisation mean?
- What is the globalisation of trade marks?
- How will be know when the globalization of trade marks (i) is happening and (ii) has happened?
- What are the indicia that this is happening/has happened?
- How is the law affected by the globalisation of TMs (assuming that globalisation of TMs is happening)?
- Does trade mark law actually have an effect on the globalisation of TMs (i) de jure and (ii) as a matter of business practice?
- What factors other than the law could be causing globalisation of TMs? How can we know whether it is the law, rather than these other factors, which is causing the globalisation?
- Is globalisation of (i) TMs and (ii) TM law desirable?
(Ta to Richard Gallafent, with whom the Kat discussed some of these ideas)