UK Patent Office Urges Responses To Consultation On Relative Grounds For Refusal

by Robin Pilgrim, LawAndTax-News.com, London

02 March 2007

The UK Patent Office warned this week that the deadline for its consultation on a proposed new regime for examination of trade marks on relative grounds is drawing near.

In December 2006, the Patent Office launched a consultation on how, in the future, the relative grounds for refusal contained in the Trade Marks Act 1994 (“the Act”) should be dealt with.

In summary, 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.

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 most recent consultation therefore sets out draft legislation to show how the new regime will operate.

The deadline for comments on this matter is March 12.

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