NEWS
EPO and Rospatent sign patent translation deal of Rospatent, added that
European and Russian innovators can now freely translate patent
applications in both
English and Russian, under an agreement signed by the regions’ patent offices in May 2012.
Te European Patent Office (EPO) and Rospatent have exchanged full-text versions of patent documents that can be translated on the EPO’s website. Tis is the first time in the history of the European patent system that Russian-language patents will be available in English.
“Tis agreement breaks new ground in the relationship between the EPO and Russia,” said EPO president Benoît Battistelli. “It will bring the wealth of technology contained in patents to the fingertips of innovators in both our regions, removing language as a delimiting factor,” he said.
He said that small and medium-sized businesses and research institutions will “especially” benefit from the deal. Boris Simonov, director general
CJEU rules on class headings in IP Translator case EU trademark law, and much in the public interest”.
Te CJEU has ruled that there must be a clearer and more consistent approach to registering trademarks under the Nice Agreement’s classification system.
In the dispute known as the IP Translator case, the CJEU ruled in favour of the UK’s Chartered Institute of Patent Attorneys (CIPA). Te court said applicants wishing to register a trademark must specify which goods or services they wish to protect “with sufficient clarity or precision to enable competent authorities and economic operators…to determine the extent of the protection conferred by the trademark”.
Commenting on the decision, patent attorney and CIPA spokesman Richard Ashmead, said it was “an important step towards clarity and consistency of
Te Nice Agreement, signed in 1957, was designed to provide a streamlined approach to registering trademarks. But different interpretations of the classification system, which groups products into classes labelled with headings indicating products in that group, have leſt trademark owners holding different rights in different EU countries.
Some authorities assume an application to register goods under a class heading automatically applies protection to all products in that class. Others will only grant protection to the specific goods or services mentioned in an application.
In its judgment, dated June 20, 2012, the court said trademark owners must specify whether an application concerns some, or all, of the goods or services in a class. If an applicant is only seeking protection for some goods or services, the court said that it must clearly specify which products are to be protected.
Te Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market (OHIM) said it would be working with national offices in the EU to adopt a common approach to class headings.
While the ruling has provided some clarity, questions remain over how it will work in practice. “I am relatively happy with the judgment,” said Nunzia Varricchio, chair of Marques (the Association of European Trade Mark Owners) and senior
12 World Intellectual Property Review July/August 2012
the agreement will encourage further innovation in the two regions.
Tis closer, more formal relationship follows a rise in patent filings from Europeans in Russia, and vice versa.
Applications by companies from EPO member states filed with Rospatent increased by about 10 percent from 2010 to 2011. Te number of applications filed by Russian inventors and companies at the EPO in 2011 was up 19 percent on the previous year.
trademark attorney at DSM, “but the challenge lies in interpretation and implementation.”
“It is reassuring that OHIM promptly released a practice update, but Marques is concerned about the interpretation of the CJEU’s implication that if an applicant wants to cover all good or services in a particular class, he simply recites the class heading with a declaration indicating such,” she said.
“In Marques’s view, this clearly contradicts the notion of ‘sufficient clarity and precision’, and would not be in the interest of brand owners,” she added.
Niamh Hall, trademark attorney at FR Kelly in Dublin, and vice president of
law firm the
Association of Patent and Trademark Attorneys, also expressed concern.
“Class headings are now considered to cover the alphabetical list of the Nice Classification, not all possible goods in that class,” said Hall. “Tis means we will have to become accustomed to referring to the current alphabetical list as well as all previous editions,” she said.
“Tere are issues regarding the treatment of existing applications and registrations which cover all, but not part of the class heading,” she added. “It is not clear how applicants will be permitted to indicate that they intend to cover all the goods in a class.”
www.worldipreview.com
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