WELCOME AND INTRODUCTORY REMARKS

Professor Sir Robin Jacob On this occasion, we have the huge privilege of having Joachim Bornkamm, who has guided Germany's trade mark law and then European trade mark law with a firm and rational hand. Some of us would wish that he was in the European Court of Justice with those who sit in the Court of Justice sending references to him, but it is not the way and so he, like any other national judge, has to sit and puzzle with what the court in Luxembourg appears to be doing. We cannot always say that we know what it is doing because it is sometimes so obscure that we do not know.

Joachim has chosen what is, in its right sense, a technical subject, but it is also a non - technical subject, and you can see from the title: ‘Community Trade Marks: A Swiss Cheese?’ Some of you might have thought that if you have a Community trade mark it is enforceable across the Community, you get damages across the Community and that is the end of the case, but we are going to be told it is not so.

Joachim, I know that the more I talk, the more drinks are put back, so I am stopping now.

LECTURE

Ladies and gentlemen and Stecia, it is a great honour for me to be invited to give this year's Sir Hugh Laddie memorial lecture, but it is not only an honour, it is the deeply-felt need to pay tribute to the colleague and friend, Hugh Laddie, with whom I had many memorable debates in front of fellow judges from all over the world. I was impressed by his sharp intellect, which always kept me on my toes, his spontaneity, his amiability, his talent to capture your attention when explaining a complicated issue, and by his gift to make complicated issues simple. I felt very much honoured by his friendship.

We met for the first time 15 years ago in June 1998 at Singapore Airport in the lounge of Royal Brunei Airlines, of all places, being the only guests waiting for the connecting flight to Brunei where WIPO had organised a conference with judges from ASEAN countries.