UK Patent Office Consults On Examination Of Trademarks

by Robin Pilgrim, LawAndTax-News.com, London

26 December 2006

The UK Patent Office announced last week that it is seeking the views of businesses on rules which will bring into effect the new regime for examination of trade marks on relative grounds.

Earlier this year the Patent Office consulted on how, in the future, the relative grounds for refusal contained in the Trade Marks Act 1994 should be dealt with. After taking into account the views expressed in response to the consultation it then published a decision on how it should proceed.

Under the proposed new regime, the Registrar of Trade Marks will no longer refuse to register a new trade mark application in the face of an earlier conflicting trade mark unless the owner of the earlier mark successfully opposes the new application.

The Registrar’s examiners would, nevertheless, still conduct a search as part of the examination process and would inform both the applicant for registration of the results of the search and also the owners of earlier conflicting trade marks identified in it if, and when, the application proceeds to publication.

The Patent Office explained that:

"Having decided what the policy should be, consideration has now been given to the legislative changes that are required to bring this policy into practice. This consultation document therefore sets out draft legislation to show how the new regime will operate."

Comments are invited until March 12.

Recommended