The Moroccan Industrial and Commercial Property Office (OMPIC) and the Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market (OHIM) signed on 21 June in Alicante – Spain, a Memorandum of Understanding for bilateral cooperation.
The objective of this agreement is to strengthen cooperation and exchange experiences in the management of intellectual property in order to improve the information exchange systems, strengthen training and awareness in the field and work on the issue of fight against counterfeiting.
The areas of cooperation, purpose of this Memorandum of Understanding, concern:
Capacity building: Training programs for industrial property rights for the different actors (holders, judges, etc.). This component will include seminars and workshops, and exchange of experience between the two academy offices (Moroccan Intellectual Property and Commercial Property Academy and the Academy of OHIM).
Fight against counterfeiting: OMPIC and OHIM will establish effective mechanisms for information exchange, awareness of stakeholders and the collaboration between the European Monitoring Centre for violations of intellectual property rights and the future Moroccan Observatory on Infringement, being implemented in the framework of the National Committee for Industrial and Anti-Counterfeiting (CONPIAC) Ownership.
Data exchange: Both offices will work for the online exchange of data and statistics on trade marks, designs and industrial models. To this end, Morocco is expected to join the TMview platform of OHIM.
Development of electronic systems: This aspect of cooperation for the development and expansion of programs processing, automation and modernization, includes the exchange of software and tools in the field.
OMPIC and OHIM offices also discussed tools of marks classification for easy and free access of users to databases, including TMclass of OHIM.
Source: The Moroccan Office for Industrial and Commercial Property (OMPIC)
http://www.ompic.org.ma
