Annual Technical Report on Trademark Information Activities in 2014 submitted by Industrial Property Office CZ
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In 2014 the average registration procedure time period was 11,6 months from the date of submitting the trademark registration application. This time period includes formal and substantive examination of the applications, technical procedure concerning the preparation for publication, three month statutory time limit for opposition and registration time. In comparison with 2013 the regisration registration procedure time has not significantly changed. On the other hand, there is a growth of decisions related to pending applications.
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Trademark information services for the public are provided within the information centre, in the public reading room, common questions can be addressed to the helpdesk (helpdesk@upv.cz) and search requests to the search section. The Office received a total of 71 trademark search requests in 2014.(Since 2014 there has been a change in the methodology of statistical records of searches). A total of 1200 serches searches (for patents, designs, trademarks) was provided for the State administrative bodies.
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International exchange of trademark information in machine-readable form (e.g., Official Gazettes)
Participation in international or regional activities and projects related to trademark information
Assistance to developing countries
Other activities
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The Official Bulletin of the Industrial Property Office of the Czech Republic has been published exclusively electronically since the beginning 2007. The Official Bulletin is published on a weekly basis (updated every Wednesday) instead of the monthly basis as before. The paper version has been discontinued.
Electronic version of the Official Bulletin has been available since 2000 (Czech version, English version has been available since 2007) and accessible at the Office’s web site:
http://www.upv.cz/cs/publikace/vestnik-upv.html (Czech version)
http://www.upv.cz/en/publications/ipo-bulletin.html (English version)
Various courses and seminars were organized for students and representatives of SMEs or research institutions; Groups of university students were accepted for excursions and guided tours in the Office’s premises.
Participation in international or regional activities and projects related to trademark information
The Office continued its cooperation with the Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market (OHIM) and took part in a number of multilateral projects. The IPO CZ has been included in a group of so called harmonized participants in the TMclass – Harmonized Database of Products and Services project, The complete TMclass database for classifying products and services has been made accessible to users in the Czech language. The IPO CZ was also participating in the TMview project, which has as its goal to provide users free-of-charge access to information on trademarks valid in the European Union through a unified search interface.
Assistance to developing countries
The IPO CZ held a regular two-week training course for 5 – 6 participants.
Other activities
The Industrial Property Office continued to fulfill responsibilities resulting from the Czech Republic's membership in the European Union especially related to the area of industrial property protection. It participated in the meetings of the EU Council Working Group on Intellectual Property.
In 2014 the first results of the Convergence Program organized by OHIM were put into practice; its goal is the harmonization of decision practice in the trademark areas in the European Union. This is especially with regards to changes in the approach to the classification of goods and services for the purposes of registering trademarks from the point of view of assessing the specificity and accuracy of terms used, the active participation of National Offices in the setting-up and management of the TM Class common database of goods and services, the assessment of the scope of protection of black and white trademarks, and the assessment of relative grounds for rejecting trademark applications.