The Gazette 1994

GAZETTE

AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 1994

afternoons, or outside court term. Frequently injunctions must be obtained and served the same day. Unlike barring orders, the service of those civil remedies are the responsibility of the practitioner and not the Court staff. It is most useful to have reliable precedents when faced with such pressures. If one is to find fault with this book it is probably that it does not contain precedent notes with reference to various parts of the Orders elucidating the law and practice pertaining to each portion. Many practitioners might argue against the specimen consent for separation agreements which would run outside the terms of many tightly drafted proceedings. It is interesting to note the salutary words of advice/warning in the adjoining jurisdiction of Lord Oliver of Aylmerton in Dinch v Dinch [1987] 2 FLR 162 AT 164: with the task of advising the parties to these unfortunate disputes to consider with due care the impact which any terms which they agree on behalf of their clients has, and is intended to have, upon any outstanding application for ancillary relief, and to ensure that such appropriate provision is inserted in any Consent Order made as will leave no room for any future doubt or misunderstanding, or saddle the parties with the wasteful burden of wholly unnecessary costs. It is, of course, also the duty of any Court called upon to make such a Consent Order to consider for itself, before the Order is drawn up and entered, the jurisdiction which it is being called upon to exercise and to make clear what claims for ancillary relief are being finally disposed of. I would, however, like to emphasise that the primary duty in this regard must lie upon those concerned with the negotiation and drafting of the terms of the Order and that any failure to fulfil such duty occurring hereafter cannot be excused simply by reference to some inadvertent lack of vigilance on the part of the court or its officers in passing the Order in a "It is in all cases the imperative professional duty of those invested

form which the parties have approved."

the Director General of The Spanish Patent and Trade Mark Office after dinner at the beautiful Retiro Park in Madrid. Over the following two days the papers were delivered by selected speakers concerning developments in the laws relating to trademarks among the member states of the European Community and what was formerly known as the Eastern Block nations. Among the speakers was Martin J. Tierney of FR Kelly Dublin who spoke on the subject: "The trademark profession - where will it be in the year 2000?" National trademark systems in the European Community are now governed by the Trademark directive of December 1988. Countries belonging to EFTA and the countries of the Central and Eastern Europe will also have adopted new trademark legislation compatible with the 1980 directive by the year 2000. Uniformity should facilitate the obtaining of trademark protection but having identical substantive rules does not mean that they will lead to identical results. The lack of harmonisation with regard to registration procedures and procedures governing infringement actions means that the outcome will not necessarily be identical. A mark which is un-registerable for lack of distinctiveness may still be registered if it has acquired the necessary degree of secondary meaning. Acquiring distinctiveness or secondary meaning in one country within a language area will be a much easier achievement than doing so on a Europe-wide scale. This is particularly so with Austria, Norway and Sweden about to add to the language problem. The Babylonian Principle requires that the Community Trademark Office should be able to decide matters in all

If what one is trying to achieve in a Consent Order is not within the ambit of the pleadings and the jurisdiction of the Court to order, it can always be dealt with by way of an undertaking. Such niceties can be overlooked in the heated atmosphere of a Court session. Practitioners will always have an eye to subsequent enforcement of an Order when drafting it up. Not to do so carefully is a recipe for trouble at some future date. Traditionally however, such Consent Orders are drawn up in a rushed fashion on the day of hearing, not infrequently in handwriting. Useful guidelines on drafting precedent Consent Orders would be enormously useful to the busy family practitioner. In the UK the Solicitors' Family Law Association produced a book of precedents for Consent Orders which is already in its third edition. Perhaps Mr Gill could be encouraged to consider the issue of Consent Orders in their own right in another companion volume. In view of the demands on every practitioner to combine efficiency with effectiveness, Mr Gill's book is of enormous assistance and is well worth the outlay. The diskette option for those using Word Perfect 5.1 is especially welcome.

Rosemary Horgan

Trademarks from Here to 2000

Published by European Communities Trade Association

This recently published booklet contains an account of a conference organised by ECTA and held in Madrid in June 1993. The conference was attended by representatives from thirty nine different countries spanning all the continents. There have been twelve such conferences of this association The inaugural speech was given by

nine officials languages of the community. But not all agree.

Mr. Tierney tells us in his self- effacing fashion that by the year 2000 he will have reached his "sell-by date" thereby allowing him certain freedom to indulge in pure speculation. In

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