Trademark protection in the European Community is usually only created once a trademark has been registered for specific goods and/or services at a Trademark Office. The trademarks may consist of words, letters, numbers, pictures, or even colors, sounds or smell. An application to register an olfactory mark is generally possible, however, with smell marks, the requirements to provide a graphical representation of such a mark on filing a trademark application is often a particular problem, which is why an olfactory mark cannot be registered as a trademark at the time with the European Union Office for Intellectual Property. Apart from the terms or images claimed for goods and/or services in a trademark application, there is also the requirement to pay the official fees in order to obtain protection for a trademark. In accordance with the uniform requirements of trademark laws of the different member states of the European Community a trademark may be eligible for registration if it has distinctive character. The distinctiveness of a trademark means that the mark in question makes it possible to identify the products for which registration is sought as originating from a given undertaking and therefore to distinguish the products from one undertaking from the products of the other.
In practice, therefore, the examination if a trademark has acquired distinctiveness is quite a difficult hurdle to overcome.
Before filing a trademark application we can search for a trademark to check if a similar trademark to your brand already exists. If there exist earlier rights, we can inform you accordingly in order to clear potential hurdles and to avoid conflicts.