Changes to the European Trademark System are Imminent
A major revision to the European Union trademark system that will affect both Community trademarks (CTM) and individual country trademarks (of EU member states) is imminent. Some of the changes are administrative and some legal, while others directly affect trademark filings and renewals. A summary of the changes is as follows:
Administrative:
The Community Trademark will be renamed European Union Trade Mark
OHIM (the name of the trademark office as of the date of this post) will be renamed to European Union Intellectual Property Office
Changes Affecting Trademark Filing and Renewal:
Goods and services will have to be specifically described. Filing for class headings &/or listing all of the goods in a class will no longer be permitted.
There will be separate fees for each class in which trademark registration is sought, as is already the case in the United States. (As of the date of this posting, a single trademark application could include up to three classes for no additional fee.)
Legal:
All National offices will be required to implement administrative procedures for trademark cancellation. (Until now, trademark cancellation has only been possible in some countries via court proceedings.)
Some of the changes will require EU member states to harmonize their laws regarding trademark infringement and remedies, as well as make it somewhat easier for trademark holders to stop infringing goods from coming into the EU or being distributed thereafter. Also in the package, which can be viewed [http://data.consilium.europa.eu/doc/document/ST-10374-2015-INIT/en/pdf] online, are directives aimed at protecting the public from overzealous and overreaching trademark owners.
Although still proposed, the new regulations, as my recent trip to Europe made clear, are destined to be implemented quickly — possibly as early as Q2-2016, although EU member states will have three years in which to implement them. This is the first significant change to the European trademark system in more than 20 years.
From my perspective, these are all welcome changes, with the possible exception of additional fees for filing in multiple classes. However, the goal of the fee change is laudable. By modestly reducing the cost of trademark registration, while adding fees where more than one class is claimed in an application or renewal, the European Union Intellectual Property Office hopes to discourage overbroad trademark claims — a typical problem in the EU. Our clients have often faced the situation where they wish to clear their marks for use in the EU, but are blocked by a substantially similar mark covering a class that isn’t even in use. Hopefully the new regulations will clear out a lot of this “dead wood.”