November 2008
In a move certain to be welcomed by business around the world, the European Commission has just announced that it plans to significantly reduce the cost of obtaining European Community trade mark protection.
In a speech delivered in Brussels on 11 November, Charlie McCreevy – European Commissioner for Internal Market and Services – outlined his plans for substantial official fee reductions, and improvements to some aspects of the EU trade mark system. You can read the full text of his speech here.
Specifically, whilst the final details are due to be announced by the end of the year, Mr McCreevy said that he intended to bring down the official application and registration fees (for up to three classes of goods and services) to a combined total of €1000 – a near 40% reduction from the current levels.
This, along with improvements in efficiency and efforts to deal with the backlog of oppositions, is all part of the European Commission’s ‘Small Business Act’, which aims to make the EU trade mark system more accessible to SMEs – and thus also to trade mark owners in smaller, and developing economies, where European IP costs have sometimes proved to be prohibitive.
Mr McCreevy observed that the EU trade marks and designs systems have both been ‘hugely successful’, ‘providing hundreds of thousands of companies from all over the world with EU-wide protection’.
At Forresters, we fully support the European Commission’s initiatives, and will update you on progress via these pages.
In short, we echo the Commissioner’s final thoughts – strong industrial property rights are essential to protect innovations and to remain competitive, especially in these difficult economic times. These fee reductions are thus are a welcome move towards making the EU trade marks and designs system even more accessible, and affordable.
If you could like further information on this, or indeed on any aspect of UK/European IP Law, please feel free to contact us.