EU Trade Mark Search & Application

The registration of a European Union trade mark is the most efficient way to protect a trade mark in all European Union countries.  The trade mark can be your business name, brand name, company logo or slogans, the protection is effective throughout the whole of the European Union. Just like the UK, once the European Union trade mark registration has been granted it will last for 10 years and is renewable in 10 year periods thereafter, the registration can therefore last indefinitely as long as the registration is renewed at the appropriate time.

Again, before the European Union trade mark application is filed it is very important to ensure that no existing identical or confusingly similar trade marks exist which are either identical of confusingly similar to your proposed trade mark. We therefore suggest that we complete our clearance searches on the UK and EU Trade Mark Registers prior to filing the application. Although the European Union Trade Marks Registrar will search against existing national European trade mark applications and registrations before accepting the application for registration, it is much more cost effective to search the UK & EU Trade Mark Registers only then file the application and wait and see the results of the examination report.

If we were to conduct 27 individual trade mark searches on all 27 national European Trade Mark Registers prior to filing the application these searches would cost approximately £4000, which by far outweighs the cost of filing the application.

The procedure for obtaining a European Union trade mark registration is exactly the same as the UK, however because of the amount of applications received at the European Union Trade Marks Registry it will take approximately 6 months to obtain the registration.