Five Largest Trademark Offices Hold Annual Meeting at the USPTO
Guest Blog by Commissioner for Trademarks Mary Boney Denison
The USPTO is dedicated to working closely and regularly with its trademark office counterparts worldwide to cooperate on processes and exchange best practices. With that in mind, we hosted the 2015 TM5 Annual Meeting at USPTO headquarters December 1-2. The TM5 comprises the five largest trademark offices in the world: the USPTO, the Japan Patent Office (JPO), the Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO), the European Union’s Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market (OHIM), and the Trademark Office of the State Administration for Industry and Commerce of the People’s Republic of China (SAIC). The annual meeting saw progress on a number of cooperative projects, including a vote to expand invitations to other countries to participate in the USPTO-led ID List Project, (which I’ll tell you more about below).
The TM5 is an outgrowth of the Trademark Trilateral, a cooperative framework established by JPO, OHIM, and the USPTO in 2001. That framework was expanded to include KIPO and SAIC in 2011 and 2012, respectively, and the group became known as TM5. The TM5 framework allows the partner offices to exchange information on trademark-related matters and to undertake cooperative activities aimed at harmonizing or improving their respective trademark protection systems and procedures. The 2015 TM5 Annual Meeting also included sessions with users, designed to obtain feedback on the existing efforts and to generate ideas and discussion about future work.
The work of the TM5 is structured through cooperative projects designed to improve users’ interactions with national trademark offices and the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). These projects include, among others, minimizing bad faith filings, TMview, common status descriptions and ID List, and comparison of examination results and Madrid Protocol procedure.
Minimizing Bad Faith Filings
The TM5 partners continue to make efforts to minimize the incidence of bad faith trademark filings around the world by exchanging best practices in order to provide more transparent information to users. To that end, the TM5 published a report summarizing the partners offices’ best practices. The TM5 agreed at the 2015 Annual Meeting to continue to hold seminars with users and other national trademark offices to generate recommended solutions to this global problem. The next seminar for the TM5 partners to engage with users will be held in Tokyo, on March 1, 2016.
TMview
In order to make it easier for trademark applicants to access trademark information and to conduct global trademark clearance searches, the TM5 partners provide their trademark data to OHIM, the designated project leader for “User Friendly Access to Trademark Information.” The project, also known as “TMview,” allows users to conduct a single search of multiple databases, including data from OHIM, WIPO, and 43 trademark offices (which includes the USPTO, JPO, and KIPO). The TM5 partners expect that the trademark data from SAIC will be added to the system in 2016. TMview also provides a link to access the trademark prosecution history and all associated documents of an application file, if that information is provided by the national office.
Common Status Descriptors and ID List
To help make the search results of TMview or TM5 partner offices more understandable for users, the TM5 partners are developing and implementing “common status descriptors,” or uniform terms and icons that multiple national offices can use to signify the particular status of trademark registrations and applications. The USPTO is the designated lead for this project.
To improve global filing, the USPTO also leads a project to develop a harmonized global “pick list” of preapproved and pre-classified identifications (IDs) of goods or services and their translations, called the “TM5 ID List.” All of the TM5 partners participate in this project, as well as the national trademark offices of Canada, the Philippines, Singapore, Mexico, the Russian Federation, Colombia, and Chile. The ID List is now available online and is fully searchable. By including entries from this list in trademark applications filed in any of the participating countries, trademark applicants may avoid a refusal on the ground that the identification is indefinite or otherwise unacceptable. One significant development at this year’s TM5 Annual Meeting was a decision by the partners to expand the project to additional countries so that the TM5 ID List can be a truly global tool for use in offices around the world.
Comparison of Examination Results and Madrid Protocol Procedure
The TM5 partners are now comparing examination results for applications filed before each of the partners’ offices to see where practices might diverge or converge, in order to gain a better understanding of the partners’ practices and policies. The applications currently being reviewed were filed in all of the partner offices using the Madrid Protocol. Such analysis could provide helpful information to users, as well as to the partner offices regarding the ability to register applied-for marks.
Additionally, JPO leads a project to standardize information provided by the TM5 partner offices regarding practice and procedure related to designations under the Madrid System. This project will make it easier for global users to understand how to navigate prosecution in the various TM5 partner offices when filing via the Madrid Protocol.
A full list of the topics discussed at the TM5 Annual Meeting, as well as more information about TM5 in general, may be found on the TM5 website. SAIC will act as Secretariat in 2016 and will host the TM5 meetings, including the TM5 Annual Meeting, in China.
Posted at 12:11PM Jan 05, 2016 in trademarks |