It’s great to hear that the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) has been ranked (together with the Korean Patent Office) as the most innovative IP office in the world by the 2021 World Trademark Review.
In recent years the EUIPO has really led the way in the development of new applications, such as GIView, a user interface portal on geographical indications (GIs), and the Trade Mark Easy Filing Form, a mobile-friendly application that uses artificial intelligence to simplify e-filing.
In April of 2021, the EUIPO introduced blockchain to search services TMview and DesignView. As the first ever European blockchain platform, this technology will provide users with fast, reliable and secure information.
The EUIPO is also currently developing a blockchain anti-counterfeiting platform that will authenticate products and exchange data between everyone in the supply chain, and the winner of a contest to design the platform infrastructure should be announced early this year.
Creativity and innovation in IP rights protection is increasingly important in our ever-changing global economy, and it is encouraging to see that, even during a world-wide pandemic, the EUIPO continues to drive technology which will support inventors and creators for years to come.
Innovation is an essential driver of economic growth, and economic growth benefits consumers, businesses and the economy as a whole. This concept is not new, by any means: as new ideas and technologies are developed and applied, greater output is generated with the same input, more goods and services are produced, and this in turn stimulates wages and business profitability. However, innovation would suffer without meaningful, credible and enforceable intellectual property (IP) rights, and the incentive that they provide to inventors and creators to innovate in the first place.