Trademark registration, patents and copyrights

A trade mark is registered office by office. Each has its own fee, its own timetable and its own window for objections, so the order of filings is settled before any application is written.

Three kinds of rights behave differently and are easy to confuse. Copyright arises without registration; a trade mark exists only where it stands on a register; a patent only where granted. We will say which your product needs, and where.

Whether the rights sit with the company at all is an IP rights audit; watching for copies afterwards is brand protection and monitoring.

Trademark search and clearance

A trademark search comes before the application and answers one question: can this name be registered for these goods without a fight. The same work is also called a trade mark check.

• The national register of each office you plan to file in, including pending applications not yet published.
• The free databases each office publishes, plus the WIPO Global Brand Database and TMview.
• Names close to yours in sound and in meaning, and names in neighbouring classes: an office refuses on similarity as well as on an exact match.
• Company names, domains and store listings in the countries you sell in, since a conflict there is not visible in any trade mark register.

What the application needs

• The owner: the company that will hold the mark, with the address the office writes to and a person who answers.
• The mark itself — word, logo or both — in the form you will actually put on the product.
• The list of goods and services by class, in wording the office accepts: free text raises the fee in some offices.
• The date you first used the name in trade, where the office asks for it, with evidence of real use.
• Who signs the application and under what authority: an office writes only to the address on the form.

Patents

A patent protects a technical solution, not a name, and the route to it differs from country to country: somewhere the office examines the invention itself, somewhere it re-registers what another office has already granted, and the term depends on which of the two you take. Hong Kong, where both routes are open and a short-term patent sits beside the standard one, is set out in full on patent registration in Hong Kong.

Four offices, four routes

Cyprus

The Intellectual Property Section keeps the national register, and filing online costs €129 for one class. After publication others have three months to oppose.

United Arab Emirates

The Ministry of Economy and Tourism decides on examination within twenty working days, and the opposition window is thirty days after publication. The registration fee falls due only after it closes.

United States

The United States Patent and Trademark Office charges $350 per class, with surcharges when goods are described in free text instead of its own manual. After publication others have thirty days to oppose.

Hong Kong

The Intellectual Property Department charges HK$2,000 for one class and gives three months to oppose. The Madrid route does not reach Hong Kong yet, so a national filing is needed there.

Sources: the fees are published by the offices themselves — Cyprus, the United States and Hong Kong for marks and patents. The opposition windows and timetables come from the same offices’ process pages: Cyprus, the Emirates, the United States, Hong Kong. The two patent types and the twenty-year term are set out by the Hong Kong patents office, and Madrid coverage by WIPO.