Since the beginning of the initiative last year, Stobbs has been taking part in the EUIPO Stakeholder Quality Assurance Panel Project, in which users representing ten User Associations are invited to perform quality-checking audits on EUIPO decisions. An important stage in the EUIPO’s overall quality control procedures, this has also been a very interesting experience for us, as practitioners and users of the EUTM system, to have input into and an opportunity to again a deeper insight into the EUTM examiners' decision-making processes. Geoff Weller and Lucy Cundliffe, who have been attending on behalf of CITMA, contributed to this article discussing the audits which appeared in the CITMA Review (
p.8-9, login required). The most recent audit took place in January 2018 (see the EUIPO bulletin
here).