"The Soul Never Thinks Without an Image” [1]. Looking into the story of a trademark in the legal business

Marval, O’Farrell & Mairal has gone a long way since 1923 when it was founded as a patent and trademark agency by two brothers, Juan and Enrique de Marval. But it was only in 1938 when Jorge E O’Farrell (1915-2000) joined the firm and extended its activities to include the provision of legal services changing the name of the firm to Marval & O’Farrell. With this name the firm established its world-wide reputation amongst the international business community. In 1991, Hector Mairal joined the firm and the name was changed to Marval, O’Farrell & Mairal The firm has grown considerably in recent years and currently has over 300 professionals.

Marval, O’Farrell & Mairal is the largest and one of the oldest law firms in Argentina and has been regarded by various publications as the leading law firm in almost every area of practice.

The IP group, which still prides upon having been the starting point of our firm, provides a comprehensive registration and protection service of IP rights including patent, trademark, copyright and domain names, particularly in the areas of mediation and dispute resolution, litigation, border measures, transactional due diligence, technology transfer, data protection, advertising and entertainment law, internet and information technology, and unfair competition.

Being involved in the trademark field, we are deeply concerned about our own image, name and trademark.

The essential function of a trademark is to exclusively identify and distinguish the source of products or services. In Argentina trademark rights arise out of the registration of a mark rather than use and, as our clients, we have resorted to registration of our trademark and logo and make great efforts to protect them as we are fully aware of their value.

Marval, O’Farrell & Mairal’s trademark and logo are well-known by colleagues and clients to identify the quality of our services. In order to keep up with the image and reputation that our name, trademark and logo trigger off in the market, the Marval, O’Farrell & Mairal IP group works to provide the most adequate legal strategy to meet our clients’ needs and secure their IP rights based on our long-standing expertise in the field.

Both in Argentina and internationally IP rights are essentially territorial. The advent of the Internet and the pervading trend to “go global” have implied great benefits for commerce but have come with a dilemma for IP practitioners: in a business world with no borders, how can we protect IP rights?

In accordance with the international tendency to explore a suitable answer to this dilemma through Customs measures, for many years Marval, O’Farrell & Mairal worked on the creation of a Voluntary Register of Trademarks with the local Customs through which trademark owners could be informed of importations and exportations of goods identified with their trademarks.

Becoming aware of the needs voiced by Marval, O’Farrell & Mairal and by others in the private sector, as to the urgency of easy attainable tools to deal with counterfeit goods, the Argentine Tax authorities implemented a trademark pre-emptive information system called “Sistema de Asientos de Alerta en Aduana” (Customs Alert System).

This recently enacted system allows trademark owners to record their trademarks with the Argentine Customs to stop the importation and exportation of counterfeit goods and also obtain information about parallel importations.

At Marval, O’Farrell & Mairal we celebrate that the border measures now available in Argentina place our country within the highest level of frontier protection for trademark owners and other IP rights. We are also proud that the deep commitment to our clients’ evolving needs has driven us to seek protection beyond the existing regulations and make a healthy contribution to the development of Argentina’s spectrum of protection of IP rights.