The amendment, effective since 1 January 2019, changed the Czech legislation on trademarks. The legislator thus reflected the European directive.
The most significant changes concerning trademarks particularly include the following:
- a trademark may also be any designation that cannot be represented graphically (i.e. a movement, sound or multimedia trademark),
- extension of trademark types (e.g. spatial, positional, patterned, etc.)
- the assessment of the grounds for refusing registration of a trademark may now be carried out by the individual trademark owners, who must object to the registration of a trademark within the period of 3 months of the date of publication of the application for trademark registration (previously, the obligation to check conformity was performed by the Industrial Property Office), and
- introduction of the so-called certification trademark. The reason for introducing the certification trademark is to guarantee certain characteristics of the product and service (it is not used to distinguish the product or service).
The amendment has brought significant changes in trademark legislation. On the one hand, it extends the range of trademark types that can be registered and reflects the needs of the current market, while putting emphasis on the prudence and review to be carried out by trademark owners at regular intervals, taking into account the statutory time limit for submitting objections to the registration of the trademark. In view of this relatively fundamental change, we recommend our clients to regularly check the Industrial Property Office’s website – at least once every 2 months – to prevent the expiration of the 3-month period for submitting objections to the registration of the “conflict” trademark.
