Director Sarah Gilkes and Senior Associate Alana Long attended the International Trade Mark Association (INTA) Annual General Meeting (AGM) in Orlando, Florida, in June this year. Alana Long tells us about their experience at this major intellectual property event.
On 21 May 2016, some 10,000 trade mark lawyers, in-house counsel and brand owners descended on the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando for INTA’s AGM.
Sarah and Alana both had busy schedules at the AGM attending various table topics, workshops and meetings with IP colleagues from all over the world. As many of you know, mdp has a trusted network of international IP agents that are called upon to assist with our clients’ offshore patent, design and trade mark matters. The AGM is a fantastic place to meet with the agents that mdp works with on a daily basis.
As with most professional relationships, having face-to-face meetings with the advisors we entrust our client’s matters to is hugely important and we were pleased to further strengthen and solidify those existing relationships through attendance at the AGM. This trip also proved a great opportunity to meet new friends and initiate future referral relationships.
A highlight of the trip for both Sarah and Alana was a networking event held at Universal Studios where participants completed a Scavenger Hunt in small teams of new faces. New friendships were forged over Harry Potter, Dr Seuss and a Polaroid camera (through which we documented our findings and took awkward selfies), offering a welcome interlude from the more formal part of the conference.
Next year’s conference is in Barcelona and is expected to be every bit as successful and memorable as the Orlando experience.
