Trademark

Trade marks from the Irish Patent Office have now been added to the TMview search tool which provides free access to trade mark applications and registrations from a number of leading trade mark offices.

The latest expansion brings the total number of offices which have made their trade mark data available to TMview to 25.

With the addition of more than 153000 Irish trade marks, TMview now provides access to almost 9,7m trade marks in total. Since TMview went live on 13 April 2010 it has welcomed more than 980.000 visitors from 185 different countries, with users from Spain, Germany and Italy among the most frequent visitors.

For further information on TMview, please click here. To have a deeper grasp on how this tool works, you are also invited to read the European IPR Helpdesk factsheet written in collaboration with OHIM on “how to search for Trade Marks”, available in the library.

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Every day many good ideas and research results are wasted due to a wrong strategic innovation plan; writing a “good patent” does not necessarily mean that an idea is transformed into a “good business”. Before starting with a new technology development or a research project, both entrepreneurs and researchers should carefully develop knowledge of the state of the art using IP databases for verifying if the idea is really new and if there is any blocking patent contained in other similar technologies.

This would prove to be beneficial from the business rollout up to the subsequent internationalisation, and the present case study draws attention to this process.

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This month Poland joined the TMview, a free search tool for trade marks.

During this year ten national Patent and Trade Mark Offices have joined the TMview and soon the offices of Ireland, Greece and Cyprus are also expected to join. Currently, more than 9,5m of trade marks can be searched.

For further information, please click here.

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The Single Market is full of opportunities, in particular to doing business in another EU country than your own. It is essential that in this process you are aware of your rights. The website Your Europe can certainly help you get the important information on the Internal Market that you need, as Commissioner Barnier explains here.

In this website, you will also find a webpage dedicated to Intellectual Property Rights, with information concerning the European Union and also each Member State. In Your Europe you will find the main Intellectual Property rules in each country, as well as information on further resources and organizations dealing with Intellectual Property at national level.

In Your Europe you will also find a useful catalogue of available online tools and services for business concerning Intellectual Property Rights.

The information is available in all the languages of the European Union.

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Trade marks from the Austrian Patent Office and the German Patent and Trade Mark Office (DPMA) have now been added to the TMview database which provides free access to trade mark applications and registrations from a number of leading trade mark offices.

The latest expansion brings the total number of offices which have made their trade mark data available through TMview to 23, including the Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market (OHIM) and the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO), and to more than 9.1 million the trade marks accessible through it.

On a different note, the Romanian State Office for Inventions and Trademarks (OSIM) is now integrated into EuroClass. This new incorporation brings the number of Participating Offices to 29, including OHIM.

For further information on TMview, please click here; to know more about Euroclass, here.

To have a grasp on how these two databases work and their functions for trade mark searches, we invite you to read the European IPR Helpdesk fact sheet on trade mark searches, recently updated in collaboration with the OHIM and available in our website library section.

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We are pleased to announce the newly updated fact sheet on trade marks search, published in collaboration with the Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market (OHIM). OHIM as the official trade marks and designs office of the European Union registers the Community trade mark (CTM) and registered Community design (RCD). For further information on OHIM please click here.

There are many reasons why you may need to perform trade marks and should use trade mark’s databases:

1. before applying for a new trade mark, since it is essential to make sure that it is free to use;
2. once a trade mark is registered it is also important to regularly consult trade mark databases in order to check if similar or identical trademarks are being registered;
3. regardless of any intention to register a trade mark, these databases can also be used as source of business information. In fact, knowing the trade marks filed by a competitor can give you some insight into its commercial strategy.

To know more about trade marks searches and how to perform them download this newly updated fact sheet!

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In March 2011 the Max Planck Institute (MPI), Munich, published its study on the overall functionality of the European national and Community trade mark systems. The MPI has now taken things further, having produced a set of proposed draft amendments to the Trade Mark Directive and Community Trade Mark Regulation based on further thoughts in the light of responses to the publication of last year's document.

For further information and to access both the original study and a selection of related texts, please click here

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TMview keeps expanding the number of participating Trade Mark Offices that have decided to include their data on this tool. The latest office to join was the National IP Office of Malta, Commerce Department with around 50.000 trade marks.

For further information on the TMview, please click here.

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The OHIM IP Seminar 2012 organises by the Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market (OHIM) Academy, has begun on Monday September, with several sessions set in the week to come.

The Seminar aims to offer a platform for participants to learn and to exchange new ideas in the IP field, with a focus on trademarks and designs. Plenary sessions will run in the morning from 09:30 to 13:30, and afternoon workshops will follow, focusing either on legal issues or showcasing e-business tools. Every day will feature a quiz on what´s been covered during that session, with a final quiz at the end of the two weeks.

To see the Seminar programme, please click here

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