Understanding Community Trademarks

If you would like to apply for a community trademark you can do that without risking not being able to change it to a national trademark if you would like to do that. The trademark of the community was invented to complement the national trademarks and you can change your trademark into a national one whenever you want to.

If a person who has a community trademark already owns a national trademark, he may keep the right to the community trademark as well. By doing that he can keep his rights to the name in the community even if he decides not to keep his national trademark, which can be a good idea.

This way of handling the trademark issue, lower the costs a lot compared to most other countries around the world. The registration process of a community trademark is a lot cheaper than the cost for filing for a national trademark in most of the countries that are members of the European Union.

You will only have to pay once before getting your trademark and no additional fees will come. The beauty of this enables you a lifetime of use and enjoyment of your trademark without the fear of forgetting to make some annual or other payment to keep it secured to your estate.

It's not a complicated procedure to get a community trademark and you can send the application to the Office for Harmonization in Internal Market or to one of the offices for industrial properties.

If you are granted a community trademark you can use it in the whole European Community and you have full rights to your name and can stop all others from using your name.

You don't have to pay lots of money to apply for a community trademark. It's pretty cheap.

You can keep a community trademark being valid in all the member states of EU if you use it in only one of the countries. That means you can have a community trademark without having to be afraid to lose it if you don't use it a lot.

Since the community trademark is valid in all member states of EU it's easy to file for a community trademark.

You only need to file once to get a community trademark

There is only one center for the administration.

You only need to fill in one application form.

There is one language for all.