20.03.2009
New Accelerated Trademark Examination System in Japan
The Accelerated Examination System was introduced on September 1, 1997 in Japan. It is designated to protect the interest of an applicant in cases when an urgent registration of the trademark is required for certain reasons (e.g. conflicts with third parties).
Statistics show that in 2007, a typical trademark application took 6.9 months to be registered. In cases where the Accelerated Examination System is applicable, the time is shortened to an average of 1.3 months.
However, the requirements for an Accelerated Examination System were quite strict:
The applicant had to already use the applied trademark or had to be in preparation to use the trademark, and — more importantly — there had to be a specific necessitiy for the accelerated examination. The latter was assumed in cases where a third party had already begun using the applicant’s trademark without permission, or if a third party had warned the applicant against using this trademark and similar cases.
As a result, the Accelerated Examination System was only applied to a very limited number of cases (about 0.3% of all trademark applications in 2007).
A revised system will be implemented starting on February 1, 2009 by dropping the second requirement. Now the Accelerated Examination System is applicable to trademarks which are already being used by the applicant, or when considerable preparations for such use have already been made.
Japan, Japanese Patent Office, Japanisches Patentamt, JPO, Marken, trademarks
