As reported in the November 2012 edition of Alicante news, the Office is currently in the process of updating its Manuals on trade mark and design practice and transforming them into Guidelines – a unique source of reference for the Office’s practice that will be available in all official EU languages.
The aim is to balance the work evenly over the course of the year. Therefore, the various parts and sections of the Manual of trade mark and design practice have been divided into two working packages, Work Package 1 (WP1) and Work Package 2 (WP2).
WP1 was launched on 1 January and is currently in phase three. The Guidelines have been drafted, reviewed internally and discussed; they have been sent for translation into the five languages of the Office and have been circulated amongst the user associations, EU IP offices and the BOIP, with a view to getting feedback before the next meeting of OHIM’s Administrative Board (AB). After consulting the AB, the President will adopt the updated Guidelines. Once the final Guidelines text is adopted, it will be translated into the remaining official languages of the EU, will be published online and will enter into force.
On 1 July 2013 the Office launched WP2. The draft Guidelines are being produced by OHIM’s cross‐departmental teams (the Knowledge Circles, or KCs). Feedback and comments received from users that were received in advance of the launch of this second work package are being taken into consideration. The Knowledge Circles will also extract trends from the case-law of the previous year, study the conclusions of the convergence projects and take into consideration the comments received from our users and internal stakeholders. The texts will be discussed within the Office between various units and departments with the aim of making them ready for sending for translation and to user associations and IP Offices in December.
More information you may find at: http://oami.europa.eu/ows/rw/pages/OHIM/OHIMPublications/newsletter/1309/CTM/ctm1.en.do
Source: OHIM
