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04 October 2007 / Shlomi Isaacson
Issue: 7291 / Categories: Features , Intellectual property
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Relatively speaking

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Shlomi Isaacson explains the new regime for the examination of UK trade mark applications

Practitioners and UK trade mark owners are having to adapt to significant changes in the examination procedure for new trade mark applications which came into effect on 1 October 2007.

In February 2006, the Patent Office—re-branded as the UK Intellectual Property Office (UK-IPO) after the Gowers Review of Intellectual Property —began a consultation process to assess whether the practice of examining new trade mark applications for conflict with earlier and similar registered marks should continue (see Relative Grounds for Refusal—The Way Forward).

RELATIVE GROUNDS

The refusal of an application on what are known as the relative grounds following scrutiny by a Trade Marks Registry examiner, is a feature of the existing statutory framework that intellectual property (IP) practitioners across the UK have come to know intimately.

Refusal on “relative grounds”, however, is often by no means the sounding of the death knell for a new application or the harbinger of wasted fees. Obtaining a letter of consent from the owner of

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