During last week's meeting of the Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Marke (OHIM) Users Group, our friends at OHIM presented two new tools which are in the pipeline. The first, a Community design registration online filing tool, is explained on the MARQUES Class 99 design blog, here.  The second is a Goods and Services Builder. 

When TMView was created and discussed during Convergence Programme Project CP1 and CP2, MARQUES asked if this tool could be made more user-friendly in order to allow the users to build up their own lists of goods and services before filing. Such a tool is now under construction, being based on TMClass. An entire list of goods and services can be thrown into the tool, e.g. the list of a priority application, and the tool will automatically classify all terms which coincide with a term of the harmonised data base to be found in TMClass. For all other terms, the tool makes a proposal for alternative terms taken from the harmonised database, when this is possible. Where the tool does not find any alternative, no proposal will be made.

Instead of throwing in an entire list of goods and services, the goods and services may alternatively be selected manually from TMClass. Once a list has been created, it can be stored in another tool, the Goods and Services Administrator, for later retrieval and possible amendments.

As many readers may know, if the list in a CTM application contains solely terms from the harmonised database, the application will be treated "fast track". At present, fast track applications are examined within 6.5 days in average, OHIM said.