madam president on behalf of my group and also as the chairman of the committee on the internal market and consumer protection i want to thank the commissioner very much indeed for making it absolutely clear that the behaviour of the two trademark offices concerned in benelux and in hungary is absolutely unacceptable
i emphasise that very strongly because this is clearly an attack on the fundamental principles of the internal market
i am pleased that all colleagues here have spoken in support of the decisions that the commissioner will make
i would say from a practical point of view first of all that it is a remarkable coincidence that both those trademark offices are operating in the country of the current presidency and the next presidency
the first thing my committee intends to do and i will make sure it happens is that when the minister for the internal market and indeed the hungarian minister from january onwards comes to my committee we will make sure that we ask this question and ask them to go directly to their trademark offices and say this is not acceptable
why is it not acceptable
because it is a fundamental attack on the basic principle of the internal market that there should be no discrimination of any kind on companies wherever they operate in a single uniform unitary market
in this case it is even worse because this proposal or proposed actions if they were to be upheld actually discriminates against small enterprises as opposed to larger enterprises
it is small enterprises that will be most affected by this because they may register a new trademark for a product across the european union taking advantage by the way of a fantastic internal market revolution and a very cost-effective way of protecting their intellectual property
it may take them more than five years to get that product into the marketplace and what would they find
when they come to the hungarian market they would find that the hungarian trademark office has given their trademark away to someone else
this is absolutely not acceptable
i cannot understand why it is that after all the time that we have had the office for harmonisation in the internal market the trademark office in operation we suddenly find these two trademark offices doing this
perhaps it is because the cost of registering a european trademark has come down because they are operating it so efficiently
of course these two trademark offices in trying to sustain these objections to allowing people to register trademarks will be requiring the companies concerned to register in their own jurisdictions
this is naked self-interest on behalf of these organisations
it cannot be allowed to stand
it is fundamentally against the principles of the european union and by the way it also undermines as the commissioner rightly says a major priority for this commission which is innovation getting new products into the market and making the internal market work better
