INTA Daily News

May 1, 2004 saw the fourth annual educational session for INTA’s Panel of Neutrals – mediators who specialize in resolving trademark disputes. 

Twenty-four volunteer mediators attended the training session, which lasted all day, from 9:00 a.m. until 6:00 p.m. in the Sydney room at the Marriott Marquis. The session, hosted and organized by Sandra Sellers and co-hosted by Jane Juliano, Sam Jackson and Mary Skelton Roberts – all of whom are mediators – aimed to help INTA’s Panel of Neutrals further develop their mediation skills.

“We want to make sure that the Panel of Neutrals is top notch,” says Sellers, who is president of IP dispute mediator Technology Mediation Services. “This was the fourth Annual Meeting training session that INTA has held, but it is the first year that the session is a continuing education course.”

This year the focus moved on from teaching basic mediation skills to helping mediators develop their expertise. According to Sellers, the focus was on two main areas: the different styles of mediation that mediators can adopt, and ways to resolve impasses or power imbalances in disputes. 

Three styles of mediation were explored during the session. Facilitative mediation sees mediators acting as a third party facilitator in discussions between the parties, while in the evaluative method the mediator shows the parties their relative strengths and weaknesses. The third, and more recent, style is called transformative, and is used when the mediator is trying to transform a relationship. The focus of this method is not to settle specific disputes, but to change the dynamic of the parties’ relationship. 

While the transformative method is most often used in labor disputes, Sellers says that it is also important for trademark mediators to know and understand the method. Relationships between companies are becoming increasingly important, she says, due in part to the growth in licensing agreements.

Says Sellers: “The aim of the session was not to impose one style on the mediators, but for it to be useful for them to know the different styles and to adapt those styles if they need them.”

The second focus, on impasses and power imbalances, was more direct. “We’re helping mediators to focus on ways to overcome such situations,” says Sellers, who is also a past chair of INTA’s Alternative Dispute Resolution Committee. Suggested ways to resolve such problems included changing or focusing the procedure to give the parties a fresh perspective. 

During the session, the mediators also took part in role-playing scenarios. There were three different scenarios, and each person was given the chance to mediate during one of the role plays. 

The session's attendees comprised 24 mediators from countries including the United Kingdom, Brazil, Paraguay, Belgium, Canada, Sweden and the United States.



  Top