In 2020, the Estonian Patent Office arranged or helped arrange 10 information events with 258 participants in order to raise the intellectual property awareness of different target groups. As a result of the emergency situation, several events had to be cancelled or organised on a smaller scale on the web. Last year, we discussed mostly trade mark protection, copyright and product design issues.
Traditionally, we participated in the Tallinn Entrepreneurship Day, which was held in a new format this time, and recognised the young inventors with ambitious ideas in the two rounds of the National Contest of Young Inventors. Thinking of the younger audience, we continued to introduce intellectual property on the columns of the economy notebook, which will be distributed free of charge to all learners under the Junior Achievement Economics Programme.
In the autumn, a working group of a support project for small and medium-sized enterprizes (ECP6) started work under the leadership of EUIPO. The project aims to support small and medium-sized enterprises operating in the European Union by broadening their knowledge of the importance of intellectual property and promoting effective protection of intellectual property rights. There are a number of new measures that should help meet these objectives – for example, Estonian companies will be able to apply for 50% compensation for basic fees for their trade mark and design applications (SME Fund), receive free legal advice from patent attorneys (Pro Bono Service) or receive recommendations for effective dispute resolution.
Work has also continued with the patent offices and universities of the Baltic States to establish a regional knowledge transfer network and steps have been taken to strengthen cooperation between the Patent Office and Estonian universities.
