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afternoons, or outside court term.
Frequently injunctions must be
obtained and served the same day.
Unlike barring orders, the service of
those civil remedies are the
responsibility of the practitioner and
not the Court staff. It is most useful to
have reliable precedents when faced
with such pressures.
If one is to find fault with this book it
is probably that it does not contain
precedent notes with reference to
various parts of the Orders elucidating
the law and practice pertaining to each
portion.
Many practitioners might argue
against the specimen consent for
separation agreements which would
run outside the terms of many tightly
drafted proceedings. It is interesting to
note the salutary words of
advice/warning in the adjoining
jurisdiction of Lord Oliver of
Aylmerton in
Dinch v Dinch [1987] 2
FLR 162 AT 164:
"It is in all cases the imperative
professional duty of those invested
with the task of advising the parties to
these unfortunate disputes to consider
with due care the impact which any
terms which they agree on behalf of
their clients has, and is intended to
have, upon any outstanding
application for ancillary relief, and to
ensure that such appropriate
provision is inserted in any Consent
Order made as will leave no room for
any future doubt or misunderstanding,
or saddle the parties with the wasteful
burden of wholly unnecessary costs. It
is, of course, also the duty of any
Court called upon to make such a
Consent Order to consider for itself,
before the Order is drawn up and
entered, the jurisdiction which it is
being called upon to exercise and to
make clear what claims for ancillary
relief are being finally disposed of. I
would, however, like to emphasise
that the primary duty in this regard
must lie upon those concerned with
the negotiation and drafting of the
terms of the Order and that any
failure to fulfil such duty occurring
hereafter cannot be excused simply by
reference to some inadvertent lack of
vigilance on the part of the court or
its officers in passing the Order in a
form which the parties have
approved."
If what one is trying to achieve in a
Consent Order is not within the ambit
of the pleadings and the jurisdiction of
the Court to order, it can always be
dealt with by way of an undertaking.
Such niceties can be overlooked in the
heated atmosphere of a Court session.
Practitioners will always have an eye
to subsequent enforcement of an
Order when drafting it up. Not to do
so carefully is a recipe for trouble at
some future date. Traditionally
however, such Consent Orders are
drawn up in a rushed fashion on the
day of hearing, not infrequently in
handwriting. Useful guidelines on
drafting precedent Consent Orders
would be enormously useful to the
busy family practitioner. In the UK
the Solicitors' Family Law
Association produced a book of
precedents for Consent Orders which
is already in its third edition. Perhaps
Mr Gill could be encouraged to
consider the issue of Consent Orders
in their own right in another
companion volume.
In view of the demands on every
practitioner to combine efficiency
with effectiveness, Mr Gill's book is
of enormous assistance and is well
worth the outlay. The diskette option
for those using Word Perfect 5.1 is
especially welcome.
Rosemary Horgan
Trademarks from Here to
2000
Published by European
Communities Trade Association
This recently published booklet
contains an account of a conference
organised by ECTA and held in
Madrid in June 1993.
The conference was attended by
representatives from thirty nine
different countries spanning all the
continents. There have been twelve
such conferences of this association
The inaugural speech was given by
the Director General of The Spanish
Patent and Trade Mark Office after
dinner at the beautiful Retiro Park in
Madrid.
Over the following two days the
papers were delivered by selected
speakers concerning developments in
the laws relating to trademarks among
the member states of the European
Community and what was formerly
known as the Eastern Block nations.
Among the speakers was
Martin J.
Tierney
of FR Kelly Dublin who
spoke on the subject: "The trademark
profession - where will it be in the
year 2000?"
National trademark systems in the
European Community are now
governed by the Trademark directive
of December 1988. Countries
belonging to EFTA and the countries
of the Central and Eastern Europe will
also have adopted new trademark
legislation compatible with the 1980
directive by the year 2000. Uniformity
should facilitate the obtaining of
trademark protection but having
identical substantive rules does not
mean that they will lead to identical
results. The lack of harmonisation
with regard to registration procedures
and procedures governing
infringement actions means that the
outcome will not necessarily be
identical.
A mark which is un-registerable for
lack of distinctiveness may still be
registered if it has acquired the
necessary degree of secondary
meaning. Acquiring distinctiveness or
secondary meaning in one country
within a language area will be a much
easier achievement than doing so on a
Europe-wide scale. This is particularly
so with Austria, Norway and Sweden
about to add to the language problem.
The Babylonian Principle requires that
the Community Trademark Office
should be able to decide matters in all
nine officials languages of the
community. But not all agree.
Mr. Tierney tells us in his self-
effacing fashion that by the year 2000
he will have reached his "sell-by date"
thereby allowing him certain freedom
to indulge in pure speculation. In
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