CLASS 99
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THURSDAY, 23 JUNE 2011
Change of products in design specs: OHIM proclaims!
OHIM's Alicante News is always a good source of useful snippets of news concerning designs in the European Union, and the latest issue is no exception. Here, in "Changes of products in design applications", OHIM offers good news for anyone suffering from a slip of the pen or a serious attack of product-blindness:
Tags: OHIM, product specification,
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Change of products in design specs: OHIM proclaims!
| No, it's not what you might think it is, it's part of a pacifier |
"It is established practice at OHIM that an examiner may change the indication of products in an application for a registered Community design (RCD) without consulting the applicant beforehand. This practice is laid down in the Design Examination Guidelines where it reads in chapter 6.1:Posted by: Blog Administrator @ 14.20
“The examiner will in straightforward cases substitute ex officio the wording used by the applicant in order to indicate a product with an equivalent term belonging to the Locarno Classification. Straightforward examples are synonyms American/English such as jewelry – jewellery, trunk – boot, sidewalk - pavement, nightshifts – nightshirts, garbage – rubbish etc. However, the examiner will [or jolly well should] refrain from replacing the applicant’s wording with a more specific term.”
The power to change the indication of products after the date of filing of the RCD rests solely with OHIM’s examiners. Applicants are not allowed to make those changes after submission of their applications without an invitation from an examiner.
However, in a recent decision OHIM accepted such a change by an applicant despite the fact that the examiner did not find any deficiency and hence registered the RCD as originally filed.
The application concerned RCD 1612722 registered and published for the products “teats for feeding bottles” [Or possibly for feeding people or animals?] as indicated in the application.
Just days after registration the applicant requested a replacement of the products by the term “pacifiers for babies (part of-)” [for the sake of clarity, Class 99 explains that this means 'part of the pacifier', not 'part of the baby'] arguing that the wrong products had been indicated originally due to an obvious mistake. The applicant; explained that according to the reproduction of the design in the RCD the product was obviously not a teat for a feeding bottle but a pacifier since it could not be fixed to a bottle and it did not have a slit for drinking.
OHIM’s Register Service rejected the request and the applicant appealed. The appeal did not proceed to judgment but was dealt with by interlocutory revision and the appeal fee was refunded because the Designs Service found that the original indication of products was an obvious mistake and hence a correction should have been allowed".
Tags: OHIM, product specification,
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MARQUES does not guarantee the accuracy of the information in this blog. The views are those of the individual contributors and do not necessarily reflect those of MARQUES. Seek professional advice before action on any information included here.
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