Last week, Groth & Co’s Stefan Cahling and Helena Brännvall had the privilege of attending the esteemed 42nd annual ECTA Conference. This prestigious event offered a fantastic platform to network and share insights with IP professionals from around the globe.

Groth & Co has been regularly participating in the ECTA conferences for many years.

Their main (subjective) "takeaways" from the conference:

- Sustainability. According to a European Commission study, screening of websites for "greenwashing" revealed that 50 % of green claims lack evidence. Will the Green Claims Directive help against greenwashing, or will it lead to companies not improving environmental aspects?

- AI can be an important tool which will never get tired of working but it needs to be supervised (otherwise it may draft submissions in e.g. opposition proceedings which make no sense or fabricate previous case law which does not exist). Important to have an AI-policy in place; a clear idea on which information that should be put into the system and the areas of use.

- Animal trademarks. Inconsistent case law provides the opportunity to be creative and argue in away that fits your case. For instance, a purely figurative mark in the form of an animal may or may not have a phonetic meaning.

- Caselaw. A figurative mark representing a combination of colours may be deemed as consisting exclusively of a shape of goods which is necessary to obtain a technical result and refused on that basis.

- Fighting Copycats. A practical approach (applied by inhouse counsel) is to rely foremost on registered IP-rights, including building a strong design right portfolio, since this provides the most robust legal basis. However, unregistered design rights, copyright, passing-off and unfair competition law can be alternative courses of action.