Dean Jacqui: Trade Marks (International Treaties and Enforcement) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Dean Jacqui: Trade Marks (International Treaties and Enforcement) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:653;Page:2485] 
JACQUI DEAN (National—Waitaki) 
: 
 In speaking to the first reading of the Trade Marks (International Treaties and Enforcement) Amendment Bill which was introduced by the Minister of Commerce Simon Power earlier this evening I say that the purpose of this bill is to amend the Trade Marks Act 2002 and the Copyright Act 1994. I note that a trademark is a pretty unique identifier and often a pretty hard-fought-for identifier. A trademark can be anything. It can be a word. In the case of Nike it looks like a tick but is known as a Swoosh apparently. It can be a colour as with Cadbury’s in New Zealand which fought for the right to use the colour purple. It can be a shape or it can even be a sound and quite frequently it is. 
A trademark allows a business manufacturer or a person who has developed an idea a product or a service to easily distinguish its products goods services or food from those products or services supplied by other traders. That is of course incredibly important to the people who have gone through the development of a product or service and it is closely defended. 
I think about a young designer in New Zealand in recent times Tamsin Cooper who was working out of Arrowtown in the South Island and developed some clothing items. She was challenged by another more established designer—Trelise Cooper—who is also a designer of some wonderful women’s garments. There was a very hard fight for the right to distinguish one product from another. We get a sense that it goes perhaps beyond the trade in those products and right to the heart of who a designer in particular is and how that designer feels about his or her product. It is incredibly important not just to New Zealand and not just to trade but also to the individual in some instances. 
A trademark is used most importantly for marketing purposes to provide consumer recognition that goods services or whatever of a given quality—and that is so very important in the scope of this bill—originate from one particular trader. If we think about products such as cosmetic brands we see that for examplea trademarked pot of cold cream can be many hundreds of dollars right down to a knock-off brand which can go for $4.50 or $5. We are not to know whether it is the same product inside but traders who have the trademark of the good-quality product will very jealously guard the right to have the exclusive use of that trademark and so they should. 
Trademarks are registered by the Commissioner of Trade Marks and that is done under the Trade Marks Act. This bill gives effect to the Government’s decisions to accede to treaties administered by the World Intellectual Property Organization. The treaties that the Government is to accede to are the Madrid protocol relating to the Madrid agreement. The Madrid agreement will provide New Zealand trademark owners with the possibility of having their trademarks protected overseas by filing an application for registration of a trademark with the Intellectual Property Office of New Zealand and designating one or more overseas countries that are also members of the Madrid protocol where protection is sought. Overseas trademark owners will also be able to use the Madrid protocol to protect their trademarks within New Zealand. 
This bill also gives effect to the Government’s decision to accede to the Nice agreement which concerns the international classification of goods and services for the purposes of the registration of trademarks. The Nice agreement provides a classification system for goods and services for the purpose of registering trademarks which is known as the Nice classification. The countries that are party to the Nice agreement must apply the Nice classification to registered trademarks although those countries not party may still apply the Nice classification. New Zealand has applied the Nice classification to registered trademarks for a number of years. 
This bill will also ratify the Singapore Treaty on the Law of Trademarks. The Singapore treaty aims to make national trademark registration systems more user-friendly and to reduce business compliance costs for trademark owners. That surely has to be good news for those who work so hard in the development of their products. The treaty does those things through the simplification and international harmonisation of national registration procedures. This bill empowers the Ministry of Economic Development and the Customs Service to enforce the criminal offence provisions under the Trade Marks Act 2002 and the Copyright Act 1994 related to counterfeit goods and pirated works. 
One of the aims of giving legal protection to trademarks is to prevent producers of low-quality items—counterfeiters—from passing off their products as those produced by well-known high-quality producers. We only have to think of items of clothing that are very familiar in our own lives such as the T-shirts that are coveted by our children or shoes where there can be a great divergence in quality between branded shoes and knock-off shoes. Clothing is another item. I have already mentioned designers within New Zealand but there is a vast difference between a quality brand that is made from quality cotton and uses quality cotton in its manufacturing and a knock-off brand that sometimes uses less than ideal products to make it and will tend to fall apart very quickly. Consumers need protection from that as do the manufacturers of those trademarked brands. 
The productivity and financial viability of our manufacturers our exporters and our retailers is being threatened right now by cheap and sometimes unsafe fake products. Of course that also means that jobs are unfortunately at risk at a time when our New Zealand economy our workers and our manufacturers can least afford it. Joining the treaties will help to move New Zealand’s trademarks registration procedures into closer alignment with Australia and therefore represents a further step towards the Government’s objective of creating a single economic market with Australia. That will also most importantly reduce compliance costs for business. 
I have spent most of my time talking about the first purpose of the bill. In the remaining time I will mention that the second purpose of the bill is to deter trafficking in counterfeit goods and pirated copyright works by strengthening enforcement provisions. I know that one of my colleagues will fully expand on that provision of the bill. I have pleasure in commending the first reading of the Trade Marks (International Treaties and Enforcement) Amendment Bill as introduced by Simon Power to the House.