The European Union trade mark (EUTM), formerly known as the Community trade mark (CTM), marks its 30^th anniversary today, 1 April 2026.

According to EUIPO, more than 3.2 million applications have been filed since the EUTM was launched.

In 1996, EUIPO received 43,229 applications. In 2025, the number of annual filings was 196,956.

The system reached 1 million applications in 2011, 2 million in 2019 and 3 million in 2024.

Of all filings, 56.8% are word marks and 42.6% are figurative marks. Other types of marks account for less than 1% of applications.

More statistics are available on this page on the EUIPO website.

MARQUES congratulates EUIPO, its leadership and staff on this anniversary.

MARQUES has played a key role in the development of the EUTM from its planning and creation onwards and has had permanent observer status on the EUIPO Management Board since 2008 and the Budget Committee since 2010.

Today, the MARQUES European Trade Mark Law and Practice Team takes part in many meetings and consultations with EUIPO, including user Group meetings and Virtual Communities to develop Common Practices.

Other MARQUES Teams, such as the Designs Team and the GI Team, also contribute significantly to the work of EUIPO in their respective areas.

MARQUES owns three EUTMs: one for the logo in colour, one for the logo in black and white and one for HOUSE MARQUES, the title of the MARQUES newsletter.

Image from EUIPO website

WIPO is conducting a survey to gather insights on whether Offices of designated Madrid System members should be required to issue a national or regional certificate when granting protection or renewing an international trademark registration – and what the practical advantages might be.

You can access the survey on WIPO’s website here. It is open until 24 April 2026. MARQUES encourages all members to respond.

The survey was requested at the 23^rd session of the Working Group on the Legal Development of the Madrid System in September 2025.

Chair of the MARQUES International Trade Mark Law and Practice Team Gavin Stenton (Penningtons Manches Cooper, UK) said:

MARQUES welcomes the proposal to provide registration and renewal certificates that are equivalent in all respects and aspects to those provided for national registrations, and to expedite the implementation of this change by allowing a short transitional period. MARQUES notes, however, that specifically for renewals, it is only the International Bureau that presently issues renewal certificates and not the IP Offices of the Contracting Parties.

MARQUES confirms that electronic registration and renewal certificates are of great value to its members, as they are easily and cost-effectively transmitted, stored and retrieved, but recognises that where a Contracting Party does not already provide national registration certificates in this format, it might not be possible, nor desirable, to treat International Registrations differently.

MARQUES would encourage Contracting Parties to consider, during the implementation period proposed by the International Bureau, whether electronic registration certificates could be provided and/or whether the foundation could be laid for this in any amended legislation or regulation required to implement the proposed change for International Registrations. Evidently, in order for this welcome proposal to succeed, it remains imperative that Grants of Protection (to which the proposed registration certificates would be attached) are being issued (without fail) by IP Offices of all Contracting Parties for all International Registrations.

A total of 1,878 cases were brought before the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU) and the General Court in 2025, according to statistics published by the Court. The two courts closed 1,898 cases during the year.

The number of cases pending before the courts was 2,489 down from 2,509 in 2024.

General Court trends

The General Court hears certain types of cases, including appeals from EUIPO relating to EUTMs and REUDs.

The total number of cases brought before the General Court increased by 26% to 989 – the highest number in its history. However, the number of IP cases fell 4% to 257.

The General Court closed 1,527 cases in 2025. Even if 404 essentially identical cases are counted as one case, the total closures of 1,124 represents an increase of 22% and the highest level in the history of the Court.

The CJEU said the actual duration of proceedings before the General Court is now 16 months, compared with18.5 months in 2024.

The data was published by the CJEU on 20 March and is available in all EU official languages.

Photo © European Union 2020

WIPO and the European Commission’s International IP SME Helpdesks are running a new series of webinars aimed at helping SMEs protect brands in key export markets.

The first webinar in the series will take place on 26 March at 10:00 Geneva time. It will be in English and will focus on protecting trade marks in China and the ASEAN region with the Madrid System.

WIPO says the webinar will provide:

• Market intelligence: An overview of the trademark landscape in China and South-East Asia
• Strategic essentials: Key considerations for protecting your trademark in the region
• Practical pathways: Main trademark registration routes available to businesses
• Smart solutions: How WIPO's Madrid System supports efficient trademark protection across multiple export markets.

Further webinars in this series will cover: regional deep dives on India and Latin America, an introduction to WIPO’s Madrid System for SMEs and how to protect designs internationally using the Hague System.

You can find out more and register for the webinar on WIPO’s website here.

About 200 MARQUES Council and Team members attended the Spring Team Meeting in Frankfurt last week.

During the dinner on Thursday evening, MARQUES members Claire Lehr (Edwin Coe LLP, UK) and Gabriele Engels (D Young & CO LLP, Germany) - pictured right - gave the annual Kay Uwe Jonas Memorial Lecture. Claire is Chair of the Programming Team and Gabriele is Chair of the Cyberspace Team, and both knew Kay Uwe, who died suddenly in 2012.

Claire and Gabriele paid tribute to Kay Uwe’s legacy and how his work influenced MARQUES as it is today, including through fostering young people, mentoring, and building an inclusive, collegiate community.

They added that today MARQUES is fulfilling Kay Uwe’s instincts of staying calm, acting professionally and remaining curious. “We are now the inspiration for future members,” they said.

Also during the dinner, MARQUES Chair Claudia Pappas presented the David Goldring Volunteer Award to three MARQUES members who have contributed to the association in many ways, notably by organising the German Judges Meeting every two years.

They are Till Lampel (Harmsen Utescher), Andreas Lubberger (Nordemann Czychowski & Partner Rechtsanwältinnen und Rechtsanwälte mbB) and Martin Viefhues (Jonas Rechtsanwaltsgesellschaft mbH).

Claudia described them as the “Three musketeers”. You can read a report of the 2025 German Judges Meeting in the November 2025 HouseMARQUES newsletter.

During the Spring Meeting, all the MARQUES Teams met and discussed current and future projects and representatives of each Team presented them to the whole Meeting. There was also a Council Meeting, Leadership Meeting of Team Chairs and a workshop on investigating with AI (see Class 46 report here).

The next Spring Team Meeting will be held in Barcelona, Spain in March 2027.

All photos taken by MARQUES staff

A workshop on the use of AI-based investigation tools was presented by the MARQUES Education Team, Cyberspace Team and Famous and Well-Known Marks Team during this year’s Spring Team Meeting.

The Spring Team Meeting is taking place in Frankfurt, Germany this week and about 200 MARQUES Team and Council members are expected to attend.

Cláudia Tomás Pedro, Garrigues Portugal, a member of the MARQUES Cyberspace Team, introduced the workshop topic. She said that investigation can be useful in the context of product development, product promotion, IP enforcement, genericism claims and use of trade marks.

In all these areas, she said, “information is key” to protecting IP assets. That information should be truthful and lawfully obtained and have a fiduciary value.

Information tools available include: test purchases, searches on line marketplaces; searches online networks and online searches. “For all these tools, there are solutions on the market that include AI functionalities,” she said.

Specific tasks where AI can be helpful are image recognition and classification, object detection, object tracking and content-based image retrieval.

Inês Klinesmith, Mintz Group, a member of the Education Team, shared some examples of such solutions. “AI is not quite there as a reliable investigative tool,” she said. “It is helpful but we are a long way off being able to take it at face value.”

“The idea is to proceed with caution,” said Ines. She recommended continuing to use existing tools, adding AI functionalities where appropriate and in compliance with corporate policies. She stressed that MARQUES does not recommend or endorse any particular products.

Useful tools include:

• Grok AI for examining content on X accounts only
• Reverse image search tools such as Google Lens, Yandex Images, TinEye, Bing, Lenso.ai, Etsy App Search, Redcart.ai. “I suggest checking a minimum of two of these tools”, said Ines.
• The RevEye browser extension and ImgOps can help with simultaneous searches across various platforms.

When using these or other apps and websites, Claudia said it is always important to understand the data used by the service and the terms of the service as well as the need for diversification of tools and for human supervision. “There is a blind spot to AI applications … not even the developers know how the results will turn out,” she said.

Earlier today (12 March), the MARQUES Team Leaders meeting was held. Team Chairs/Vice-Chairs shared updates on current projects and discussed the format of the Spring Team Meeting.

Following the presentations, there was a discussion moderated by Dorine Martin, Zurich Insurance, member of the Famous and Well-Known Marks Team. Topics covered included: potential red flags, such as reservation of rights and liability; precautions to take when using AI tools; the consequences of misleading or incorrect results; and examples of the use of AI in enforcement cases.

Questions from the audience concerned commercial tools available from IP companies; the use of common generative AI tools; how to sort and prioritise results; regional divergence in results; and monitoring lookalikes.

The workshop was introduced by Sandra Müller, Squire Patton Boggs, and Charlotte Duly, D Young & Co, respectively Chair and Vice-Chair of the MARQUES Education Team.

Two new Common Practices (CPs) are now available on the EU IP Network website in 23 languages, with a list of implementing IP offices and implementation dates.

“CP16 Signs describing the subject matter of goods and/or services” establishes a common understanding of the notion of subject matter and general principles on how to assess signs describing the subject matter of goods/services for which protection is sought.

“CP17 The distinctive character of slogans” establishes the concept of a slogan and a non-exhaustive list of factors for assessing distinctive character

MARQUES representatives were involved in the Virtual Community meetings for both of these CPs.

Julie Schmitt and Stephanie Taylor from the MARQUES European Trade Mark Law and Practice Team took part in the CP16 meetings. They report:

The purpose of CP16 was to harmonise the examination practice of the assessment of signs describing the subject matter of the goods/services for which registration was sought on a pan-European basis, and involved a number of Virtual Community meetings by which the various user groups and European national trade mark offices could come together to discuss how this topic is treated in each jurisdiction, as well as to agree a non-comprehensive list of examples in order to guide users and examiners when assessing trade mark applications.

We experienced the new, faster-paced format and had the clear impression that there was a genuine willingness to streamline the programme. Our experience was that user associations often shared similar views on the main issues, which we found very encouraging. We also made sure to voice the concerns of brand owners, in particular those from the toy sector and the advertising industry, which we felt could be especially affected by certain aspects of the practice. For the national offices, some of the exchanges were understandably longer, as this topic inevitably brings to the surface cultural and institutional differences, but these discussions were always constructive and added real value to the debate.

On Tuesday 17 March EUIPO will host a webinar on CP16 and CP17 (10:00-11:00 Alicante time). The webinar will be in English and is aimed at IP professionals. You can register for free on the EUIPO website here.