The meetings of the Working Group for representatives of the intellectual property offices of Ukraine, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia and the Republic of Moldova on common tools and practices developed by the European Union Intellectual Property Network (EUIPN) took place from 29 November to 01 December 2021 in Kiev. The event was organized by the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO).

The meetings of the Working Group were attended by representatives of the State Agency on Intellectual Property (AGEPI) Simion Levitchi, head of the Trademark and Industrial Design Department and Nicolae Dimov, principal specialist, Information Technology Division, Institutional Management Department.

During the event, EUIPO representatives presented the Convergence Programme implemented by EUIPO in common with the intellectual property offices of the Member States.

EUIPN has developed a set of common practices that ensure a uniform approach in the procedures for examination of applications for the registration of trademarks and industrial designs by national and regional intellectual property offices, such as:

• Scope of Protection of Black and White Marks;
• Relative Grounds of Refusal -Likelihood of Confusion;
• Graphic Representations of Designs, etc.

The search tools (TMview, DESIGNview) and the classification tools (TMclass, DESIGNclass), developed by EUIPO, were also presented.

It should be mentioned that, since the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding between AGEPI and EUIPO in 2017, the trademarks, industrial designs registered in the Republic of Moldova are included respectively in TMview, DESIGNview. AGEPI also joined the TMclass classification tools in 2017 and DESIGNclass in 2019.

AGEPI specialists presented the experience gained in the implementation and use of these tools.

In the future, the implementation of common practices developed by EUIPN will continue, taking into account that in 2021 AGEPI implemented the document referring to the Relative Grounds of Refusal - Likelihood of Confusion (Impact of non-distinctive/weak components).