About Legal & International Affairs

About the team and their work

LIA is a self-managing team that deals with legal and international matters. The legal work consists in taking decisions in opposition, cancellation and refusal proceedings. There are also various additional legal tasks, such as work in the area of (implementation of) laws and regulations, dealing with appeal proceedings before the Benelux Court of Justice, presenting at conferences for example, representing BOIP in various concertation forums, determining legal policy, as well as other corporate tasks, such as those involving privacy. 

The team is also active on an international level. There is a high level of cooperation with EUIPO on a variety of different projects, and close ties are maintained with other national and international IP bodies and organisations. 

The nice thing about the team is that everyone works according to their own strengths. Where one person prefers giving presentations or is happy to act as an ambassador for the organisation, the other focuses more on organisational matters or on legal support for other departments within the organisation. This is taken into account within the team. 

The team has legal officers of all ages, with an average age of around 40, and there are slightly more women than men in the team. The team is accountable to the Director General, Hugues Derème, who acts as the team’s direct superior.   

Further details about the work

As we said previously, the department deals with many different activities. To give you a better picture, we explain 3 workstreams for you here below: refusals, oppositions and cancellations. There is a brief explanation of what each precisely entails per section: 

1. Refusal. When a trademark is refused by our Operations department or the CoL (Committee of Lawyers – see below) decides that a trademark must be refused, parties can file an objection. In such a case, the filing party believes its trademark should indeed be registered. The LIA department writes a statement of defence explaining why the trademark cannot be registered. Someone may also lodge an appeal against a refusal decision. In such a case BOIP legal officers argue the case before the Benelux Court of Justice.
2. Oppositions. You take a decision regarding an objection a third party makes against a trademark application. For example, you assess whether there is a risk of confusion with a previously registered trademark, and you write a reasoned decision in relation to your assessment. There are always two colleagues also involved with the reading, so the assessment is then actually always made together by the three of you. 
3. Cancellations. You deal with a cancellation when a trademark has already been registered but another party wants the trademark cancelled. That party has to provide arguments as to why they believe the trademark should be cancelled. Just as for oppositions, the administrative process involved here goes through the Operations department. On completion of the whole file, the legal officers from the LIA department take a decision. This is taken again by three of you together. A decision may be taken based on a number of grounds, such as that the trademark has been registered in bad faith for example, or that it is descriptive. 

Sharing knowledge is also an important part of our work, both internally and externally. We often give presentations, and we speak at (international) conferences organised for IP professionals. We also enjoy giving lectures to students. It’s really nice to be able to pass on our knowledge to a new generation of IP legal professionals. 

An average working day for the LIA team 

Every working day is nice of course, but as an example we’ll take a look now at Wednesdays. On Wednesdays you start your day with the Committee of Lawyers or ‘CoL’ meeting. Trademark applications coming to the Operations department which have given rise to questions are discussed at this meeting. On a weekly basis there are around 30 to 40 of them. Legal criteria are used to determine whether a trademark can or cannot be registered. This leads to interesting discussions. Incidentally, all BOIP colleagues are welcome to attend the CoL meetings. It is always good to know how certain decisions are arrived at. 

After this meeting you have lunch together and you can begin writing an opposition decision. After that you might, for example, be preparing a presentation that you will be giving shortly at a conference, or you might be reading up about new judgments in the field of IP. As a knowledge institution we naturally make sure we are aware of the most recent developments.   

BOIP as a 'Great Place to Work’

BOIP is a GPTW. How does the LIA department see that? Most of all it’s about the people who work at BOIP. They really are very nice. The work itself challenges you. The organisation is also not too big, and you really can get things done. You achieve results yourself quite easily. Working conditions are very appealing.   

Never a dull moment in IP 

‘Never a dull moment in IP’ is an expression you hear often among IP legal professionals. What’s more, it really is true: IP law is constantly changing. 

It sounds like an interesting field to work in, doesn’t it? Go ahead and contact us if we’ve made you want to know more! We completely understand why 😊