Bruce Proctor General Counsel, Intellectual Property, Diageo
As an in-house intellectual property practitioner with over 20 years working for a variety of multinational companies, I’ve both prosecuted and defended my fair share of litigations across the globe, most involving trade marks and related rights. During this time I’ve had occasion to wonder why, while numerous multi-jurisdictional IP and trade mark compilations exist, there has been a paucity of comparative material focused on the important subject of trade mark litigation.
In my view, trade mark litigation can be among the most important and risky activities in which a commercial entity may engage. As these rights are among the most valuable a company holds, if not the most valuable, impairment or loss of these rights in litigation can be sudden and devastating. Given the importance of this topic, I’m pleased a very useful work, focused on a comparative approach to trade mark litigation, has emerged. The book format – essentially a series of identical questions answered by legal experts, each focusing on the countries in which they practice – makes it a very user-friendly work. This format also makes it very easy to get quick answers on the basics of trade mark litigation in a large number of jurisdictions, and provides the reader with a good bit of in-depth material, should deeper inquiry be required.
In short, this book deserves to be on the bookshelf of any IP professional focused on such issues in a wide variety of jurisdictions. We are increasingly being asked to opine on matters across the globe. While this makes for a terribly exciting legal practice, quick answers are often in short supply. This book will serve as a useful tool to those whose work regularly takes them around a rapidly shrinking globe.
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