Following a recent amendment of the Spanish Trade Mark Act, the Spanish Patents and Trade Marks Office will start using the email to notify its decisions to trade mark applicants domiciled in a foreign country. This is especially interesting for unrepresented foreign trade mark applicants that do not have a postal address in Spain.

The new changes also affect to existing opposition regime, which has been slightly amended in order to make it more flexible.

If the opposition against a published trade mark application is not allowed to process due to the non-compliance of the statutory requirements, the Office will notify the opponent of the specific defects that have caused the provisional refusal. The opponent will be subsequently granted a ten-day term to rectify such defects in order to make the opposition admissible. Should the rectification not be done in the given (and non-extendable) term, the opposition will be deemed to be withdrawn.