Dear ECTA members,

Welcome back from a hopefully nice holiday break. I hope you are ready for an Autumn with plenty of ECTA activities.

I can inform you that members of the Supervisory Board have been working together with the First and Second Vice-President of ECTA and I over the summer on developing the ECTA Strategic Plan 2020/2026, and we are hoping to finalize the discussions when we meet for the online Supervisory Board meeting in October. We hope with this to continue the evolvement of ECTA, also facing the “new normal” we all now find ourselves in.

ECTA has been busy preparing an exciting Autumn for you and we hope you will join the events lined up. Please mark the following dates in your calendar:

ECTA Autumn Meeting, during the week of 19 to 23 October 2020. The exact schedule of the Committee meetings and Council/Supervisory Board meetings will be communicated shortly.

Virtual social ECTA gathering in the afternoon of 23 October 2020 where we will raise the glasses for the ECTA 40th birthday and hold a celebratory competition. On this occasion, we will also have the ECTA Award ceremony for 2020. We are inviting all ECTA members to prepare a congratulatory message in any format (e.g. short video, picture, text, drawing) and send it to ecta@ecta.org by 21 September 2020. The Board of Directors will select the best of the best to be shown during the virtual celebration ceremony and the winner will be granted one year of free ECTA membership.

But that is not all! Following your positive feedback to our June webinars, we are offering new learning opportunities:

- 14 October 2020 (16:00 Brussels time)

User generated brands and the social media vocabulary: symbols, expression, and commerce.
Moderator: Andrew Bridges, Fenwick & West LLP (US)

- 23 October 2020 (13:30 Brussels time)

Curious about Case Law (C-328/18 P - Black Label by Equivalenza; C-237/19 - Gömböc; C-24/16 - Nintendo)
Moderator: Anette Rasmussen, ECTA President, AWA (DK)

Further webinars are being planned for later this year, please note the dates of 13 November on Brexit and 3 December on Design topics.

This week, the Board of Directors of ECTA will be meeting with several sections of the European Commission to discuss important IP topics and position papers prepared by ECTA Committees. If you are interested in being part of an ECTA Committee, bear in mind that General Committee Elections are taking place every two years and are coming up in January 2021!

I hope you will enjoy the Autumn events we are preparing for you and will not miss to sign up for a Committee of your choice next year!

I wish you and your families good health and very much look forward to seeing you at our virtual events!

Anette Rasmussen

ECTA President