ALISTAIR HAMILTON INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
PATENTS · DESIGNS · TRADE MARKS
Cefn Eurgain Lane
Rhosesmor, Nr. Mold
Flintshire, North Wales
CH7 6PG - UK
Chartered Patent Attorney, European Patent Attorney, Registered Trade Mark Attorney
Email: webquery at ahip.co.uk
NEWS
Community Trade Mark Fee Changes - Abolition of the Registration Fee
The Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market (OHIM), the body that administers the Community Trade Mark, has substantially reduced the total fees payable to obtain a community registered trade mark. This is of immediate benefit to applicants. In most cases, it is now possible to obtain a ten-year trade mark registration for all member states of the European Union for under £1200.
Applications that are already on file will also benefit from the abolition of the registration fee.
Background
Since its inception, the community trade mark system required two fees to be paid in order to obtain a registration: an application fee and a registration fee. These wre both roughly the same. Many people felt that the registration fee was not justified, since most work had already been done by the office before the fee became due for payment.
In response to this, the OHIM has abolished the registration fee entirely, but raised the application fee by about 20%, the net result being a substantial reduction. Of course, this reduction has been offset in part to UK-based users of the system because the fees are calculated in Euros.
Therefore, for a typical application (up to three classes) at present rates of exchange, our charges are now £1175+VAT. Assuming that no unexpected objections are raised by the OHIM, and there is no opposition, there are no further charges involved in completing the registration process. This represents a reduction of around 40%.
If you already have an application on file that has yet to be registered, provided that the OHIM has not yet called for the registration fee to be paid, then no fee will be payable, and the application will proceed to registration automatically once the opposition period has passed (or any opposition has been disposed of).
For general information on trade mark protection,
see my Trade Marks Information page.
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| Relevant links |
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| OHIM | http://oami.eu.int |