Capacity building for IPO staff: trade marks, designs, geographical indications, plant varieties

Under AWP 1, CarIPI II will continue to deliver capacity-building training sessions for national IP office staff to support them on their path to becoming well-resourced and efficient institutions. To ensure a lasting impact, the project will establish a continuous training programme that will focus on trade marks.

The Trade Marks Examination Training Programme will include regular sessions combining both theoretical content and practical case studies to foster progressive skill development and institutional knowledge retention. The following topics are proposed as initial focus areas:

• substantive trade mark examination – distinctiveness, descriptiveness, similarity;
• common examination errors, best practices and procedural guidelines for error correction;
• opposition, proceedings and procedural considerations;
• emerging categories of trade marks, including non-traditional marks