Gangjee, Dev --- "The Business End of Collective and Certification Marks" [2009] ELECD 273; in Simon Fhima, IIanah (ed), "Trade Mark Law and Sharing Names" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2009)

Book Title: Trade Mark Law and Sharing Names

Editor(s): Simon Fhima, IIanah

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781847202796

Section: Chapter 6

Section Title: The Business End of Collective and Certification Marks

Author(s): Gangjee, Dev

Number of pages: 20

Extract:

6. The business end of collective and
certification marks
Dev Gangjee
In the semiotic ecosystem of European trade mark law, certification and
collective marks are shy beasts, rarely sighted in law reports or administrative
decisions. According to Jeremy Phillips, `taking a panoramic sweep across the
peaks and troughs of . . . trade mark law, they are few in number and cast
almost no shadow',1 while the editors of Kerly more sedately observe that
there `has been little litigation concerning certification trade marks'.2 Such
marks, jointly referred to as association marks for the purposes of this chap-
ter,3 facilitate voluntary name sharing and have existed for over a century. Yet
a recurring lament is that they remain underutilized and underappreciated.4
This is unsurprising, considering their unusual functional niche and tentative
integration into a system of protection historically premised on a sign's ability
to indicate a single trade origin. There have been few decisions concerning the
registration of such signs or on the scope of protection afforded to them, but
this state of affairs may finally be changing. This chapter explores the assimi-
lation of association marks into the mainstream of European registered trade
mark law by drawing on a series of recent registry-level decisions in the UK5
and at the Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market (OHIM) Registry,6



1 J. Phillips, Trade Mark Law: A Practical Anatomy (Oxford University Press,
Oxford 2003), p. 621.
2 D. Kitchin et al., Kerly's Law of Trade Marks ...