EU trademarks and new UK rights

 Owners of EU trademarks now have freshly minted equivalent rights in the UK. More than 1.5m new trademark records were created and became active as the clock struck 11pm on 31st December 2020 marking the end of the UK’s transiton period and its time in the EU.

To qualify an EU trademark needed to have been registered and active at this time. The new comparable trade marks are UK rights, that exist independently from the EU equivalents. They have the same filing date as the original EU rights, but must be maintained separately. As they will be treated as if applied for under UK trade mark law.

Recognising which UK trademarks stemmed from EU seniority is straightforward, as their registration number will begin UK009 followed by the EU registration number. Those EU rights that were obtained through WIPO and the Internal Registration under the Madrid protocol use the prefix UK008 followed by the last the last 8 digits of the International Registration number.

The representative (trademark attorney) recorded on the new UK right is the same as that for the EU trademark. However as EU representatives outside the UK cannot represent before the UKIPO (after the EU decided UK attorneys would lose their right to represent before the EUIPO), many firms are choosing to have UK attorneys listed as representative. And Trade Mark Direct is working with several large EU attorney firms to be their clients attorney of record in the UK.

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