Which are the most innovative economies in 2021?

WIPO published its annual Global Innovation Index for 2021 where the level of innovations of most than 130 countries is evaluated.

This year the most innovative nation is Switzerland followed by Sweden, the US, the UK and South Korea.

Top three of the most innovative countries by region is as follow:

Bulgaria, as an EU Member State, is at 35th position in this index, but more interestingly is the fact that the country is second in the list, after China, from the group of countries with an upper middle-income level that have performance above expectations.

The Global Innovation Index is very indicative how well developed and competitive the relevant countries are. It is no surprising that the most developed countries are at the top of the list.

The good news for Bulgaria is that the country is in the first group of countries with positive perspective for future development in the innovation area.

One of the reason for this is that the software industry in Bulgaria has been growing year after year with an impressive pace (the growth for 2020 is about 20% compared with 2019 despite the pandemic). The other reason is that more and more foreign companies open R&D departments.

An additional progress in the Index, however, will require better connection between the business, scientific organizations and universities as well as better access to startup financing.

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“BVLGARI” is not equal to Bulgaria under some circumstances

The the Swiss Federal Administrative Court has rules in a case that regards two Swiss trademark applications for “BVLGARI VAULT” (for classes 9, 38 and 42) and “BVLGARI” (for classes 36 and 43).

The Swiss Patent Office refused both of them based on absolute grounds – indication of geographical origin. The reason is that BVLGARI was almost identical with the French word “Bulgarie” which is the name of the country Bulgaria.

The decision was appealed.

According to the Court, these signs although an indication of a geographical place, the name of a country, can be registered as trademarks. The argument for this was the Supreme court’s practice which allows such registration in case that the sign has acquired secondary meaning.

The Court considered that this is the case with both applications. Due to the long market presence consumers are able to recognize BVLGARI for different goods such as soaps; perfumery, essential oils, cosmetic products, hair lotions”, “sunglasses”, “jewelry, watches etc. What’s more the Court allowed both trademarks for other goods and services in classes 9, 38, 42 and 43 because it was typical companies nowadays to use their marks for related trade, production and marketing activities.

Source:  Markus Frick и  Benno Fischer-Siddiqui Walder Wyss, Lexology

Global Innovation Index 2019

WIPO published its Global Innovation Index for 2019. Switzerland was ranked as the most innovative nation in the world followed by Sweden and the US. The rest of the countries in the top 10 are Nederland, Finland, the UK, Singapour, Germany, Denmark, and Israel.

Bulgaria is ranked 40 which is three places behind the last year’s position. More data for the country can be found here.

More information regarding this index you can found here.

Video explaining how to protect trademarks in Bulgaria

The Bulgarian Patent Office started a new initiative for brief video tutorials regarding registration of different intellectual property objects.

The video below gives information on how you can register trademarks in Bulgaria. Although this video is on Bulgarian it has subtitles in English.

The Bulgarian tennis player Grigor Dimitrov applied for a new trademark

The Bulgarian tennis player Grigor Dimitrov filed a new application for Bulgarian combined trademark consists of the words “Grigor Dimitrov Grisho” – in Cyrillic and his image. The mark was applied for various classes of goods and services.

Apart from the aforementioned mark, the tennis player is the owner of another two Bulgarian trademarks and one European one too. In addition to that, his name was been registered as a domain name for different areas such as .bg, .com., eu.

This approach is not a surprise, bearing in mind his 5th position in the ATP Rankings, and his celebrity status. This is a good example for and coincide with the widespread strategy used by many sportsmen and celebrities around the world who registered their names, images etc. as intellectual property objects in order to use them afterwards in a different advertisement, merchandising and endorsement campaigns.

Having said that, however, there is a significant difference how these celebrity’s characteristics are protected in Europe and the US. While in the first case, celebrities rely mainly on the classic intellectual property legislation for trademarks, designs, copyright etc., in the second case, there is a specialized law, so-called “Personality rights”, that facilitates famous people in their attempt to use commercially their reputation, names and so on.

New lower fees from the Bulgarian Patent Office

The Bulgarian Patent Office reports about the fact that the fees for 19 different services, offered by the Office, will be eliminated. What’s more, another 44 fees will be reduced by some percentage.

The Office reminds that small and middle-sized companies can benefit from the 50% reduced fees for patent search services.

The new fees will come into force after their publication in the Bulgarian State Gazette.

Koprivshtisa’s music festival recognized by UNESCO

The music festival in the Bulgarian town of Koprivshtisa has been included as intangible cultural heritage of UNESCO.

The National Festival of the Bulgarian Folklore – Koprivshtitsa – has been held since 1965. The festival promotes the Bulgarian folklore in an incredible way, assembling singing and dancing ensembles from all over the country.

At the first folklore meeting between 12th and 15th of August almost 4,000 folklore singers, dancers, musical instrument players, etc. gathered near Koprivshtitsa.

Not only musicians take part in the event – folklore story tellers, folk custom groups, etc. participate too. An interesting fact is that participation in the fest is open to foreign groups, illustrating Bulgarian folklore dances and traditions.