The ninth session of the intellectual property consulting center for exporters is held on August 12
On August 12 ended the regular session of the consultation center on intellectual property for exporters
At the session 10 questions were asked. All questions came from the manager of the company producing clothing and leather goods.
All of them concerned the order of trademarks registration in the Republic of Belarus and abroad.
All 10 questions were answered.
Among the most interesting questions were the following:
Question: Is the examination of the application for registration of the trademark in the form of word marks that are consonant and similar in spelling?
Answer: The similarity of word, letter and numerical designations can be sonorous (phonetic), graphic (visual) and semantic. Therefore the claimed designation in Cyrillic alphabet may be opposed to an older trademark in Latin alphabet and vice versa. You should pay attention to this when developing a mark and not borrow identical or similar designations from other languages.
Question: Does examination of trademarks in the Russian Federation according to the national procedure differ from trademark examination according to the international procedure? Is there a preference for any of them? We are concerned that if we apply in Russia following the international procedure, the similar mark applied for by the Russian applicant following the national procedure will be given preference.
Answer: The approaches to the trademark examination are the same, no matter under which procedure, national or international, they are applied. And you should not be afraid that if somebody in Russia claimed a trademark by the national procedure later than your international application, he will get preference. All applications are registered in the order of arrival. In order to get an advantage of any procedure over another applicant, you can use the convention priority on giving the trademark application in your own country. The period of priority is 6 months. Thus, having filed the application in the Republic of Belarus today, and in the Russian Federation in 5 months with request of conventional priority provided for in the Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property, you will retain the priority in Russia of today.
Question: If in a year or two after the registration of the international trademark the company wants to extend the territory of its effect, will it be required to pay the full amount of duties as in the case of the original registration?
A: The basic fee for the territorial extension of an existing international registration is 300 Swiss francs instead of 653 Swiss francs for a black and white mark and 903 Swiss francs for a color mark in respect of one or three classes for an international application. The fee for the indication of each country remains the same.
Other questions concerned the amount of fees for filing an application and registration of a trademark in our country, Russia and Kazakhstan, the documents to be submitted when filing a trademark application, the number of applications if you want to register a mark in several languages, the format of the sign applied for a trademark, the terms of examination, the possibility of refund of fees if the examination is rejected, the cost of our services.
