Trade marks
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What is an opposition?
If someone owns an earlier right and they think that there is a conflict between your trade marks, they can oppose your application. To do this, they need to fill in an opposition form and pay a fee of €320. If an opposition is filed, your mark will be subject to opposition proceedings. An opposition must be filed no later than 3 months after the publication of the trade mark application.
What can you do if your application is opposed?
1 in 5 applications for EU trade marks are opposed.
- OPPOSITION PROCEEDINGS
- Step 1- Notice of opposition
If an opposition is filed against your trade mark application, we’ll send you the notice of opposition. You can then wait for further action from our side or consult an IP representative. We’ll go on to check if the opposition is admissible, but you can go ahead and contact the opponent at this stage to propose a solution if appropriate.
- Step 2 - Admissibility check
When we finish the admissibility check, we’ll send you a notification with a calendar indicating deadlines for the following steps.
- Step 3 - The cooling-off period
If an agreement has not been reached earlier, we’ll invite both you and the opponent to try to come to an amicable agreement.
- Step 4 - The adversarial part of the proceeding
If no agreement is reached during the cooling-off period, we’ll invite both you and the opponent to submit observations in support of your respective cases.
- Step 5 - Decision
The Office will decide whether or not the earlier rights prevail and whether or not the application must be rejected for all or some of the goods and services.
- REGISTRATION
All opposition decisions are published online and you have a right to appeal if the decision is not in your favour.
If an opposition is successful and you cannot register your trade mark in the EU, you have the option to convert your EU trade mark into national registrations, provided no conflicts exist.
After your application is published, anyone can submit observations regarding the registrability of your trade mark and can ask us to re-examine your application following steps 1, 2 and 3.