The amendment to the Trademarks Act implements non-conventional trademarks protection and demands more prudence of registered trademarks owners

Act No. 286/2018 Coll.
Effective from: 1 January 2019

Trademarks are important commercial and marketing tools which help entrepreneurs to distinguish goods and services offered to customers. Until now, only the conventional trademarks (i.e. those consisting of letters, numerals, words or symbols) used to be protected and the Czech Industrial Property Office should dismiss an application, if an earlier identical trademark exists.

This amendment implements the European directive No. 2015/2436, which harmonizes trademark protection across the EU member states. The amendment is a significant breakthrough as it enables non-conventional trademark protection. Such trademarks can be based on sound, smell, lights or motion. However, every and each trademark shall have distinctive character. Further, the earlier registered trademarks owners are newly required to object to an identical trademark registration within 3 months from the date of application release. If no objection is filed, the Industrial Property Office will register such trademark despite its identity.  

Therefore, we recommend you to carry out regular released applications monitoring to apply required objections in time.