Annual Technical Report 2012 on Trademark Information Activities submitted by Estonia (CWS/ATR/TM/2012/EE)
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I. Evolution of registration activities
In Estonia it is possible to apply for the protection of Trade marks under the Trade Marks Act that took effect on 1 May 2004 (the first Trade Marks Act entered into Forde in 1992). From 1 May 2004 the EU legal acts concerning trade marks are also valid in Estonia.
Since spring 2007 it has been possible to file the trademark applications through the electronic filing portal. The portaal enables to fill in and send trademark registration applications to the Estonian Patent Office and to look at the applications filed earlier. Anyone can fill in the form, but only the applicant (or a patent attorney representing him/her) can sign it. Estonian ID-card and its reader are required. Upon request the Office issues a notification about the acceptance of the application. The notification can be saved or printed. 47% of the Estonian applicants used the possibilities of electronic filing in 2012. Other documents relating to the examination can be filed electronically with a digital signature.
There are four possibilities to obtain legal protection for a trade mark in Estonia: • by registering it in the register of trademarks and service marks by filing an application with the Estonian Patent Office; • by registering it with the International Bureau of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) requesting legal protection in Estonia;
• by making a trade mark well known in Estonia; • by registering it as a Community trade mark with the Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market (OHIM).
1,106 trade mark registration applications were filed in 2012, which was about 11% less than last year (1,254 applications in 2010). The number of applications filed by Estonian applicants has decreased. If there were 888 applications filed in 2011, then in 2012 there were 857, which is about 3.5% less. International trade mark registrations designating Estonia numbered 1,535 (1,788 in 2011). There were 14% less International registrations than last year. In total 2,641 trade marks were filed for legal protection (3,042 in 2011). A general falling tendency that began already in 2004 due to Estonia's accession to the European Union continued in 2012. In conclusion the number of applications has decreased 13% in comparison with last year. At the end of the year 888,373 Community trade marks were valid in Estonia, including 790 trade marks from Estonia, 28,600 registered national trade marks and 32,590 international trade marks with legal protection extended to Estonia.
The Trademark Department rendered 3,581decisions - 1,606 for national applications and 1,975 for International registrations, which is about 5% less than in 2011 (3,801 decisions). Estonian applicants filed 49 international trademark registration applications for forwarding to WIPO (40 in 2011). Among the countries designated for protection, Russia was the first, followed by Lithuania, Latvia, Finland, China and Ukraine. In about 40% of the applications the European Union was designated.
In 2012 applications from the EU member states made up 64.1% of the total of trade mark applications, including 33.5% from Estonian applicants. Among the EU member states Germany was the most interested in gaining legal protection in Estonia. Applications and international registrations from Germany formed 4.7% of the total of applications, followed by France (3.3%) and Italy (2.6%). Of other states Russia (10.9%), China (5.3%), Switzerland (5%), the USA (3.7%) were the most interested.
The most popular goods for which legal protection was applied in 2012 were pharmaceutical preparations (7.4%), followed by electrical and scientific apparatus (5.2%), foodstuffs (4.9%), as well as cosmetics (3.9%).
The most popular services were advertising, business management and office functions (9.8%), followed by education, training, entertainment, cultural and sports activities (5.8%), scientific and technological research, design and development of computer hard- and software (4.3%).
Trade mark applications are fully examined on both absolute and relative (prior right) grounds. The average duration of the examination of trademarks and international registrations is 10-12 months, but in 2012 the examination of national applications took 15 months, because the large number of applications filed in previous years caused a longer examination queue than usual.
Trade marks are published in the Estonian Trademark Gazette twice - first, in Part I when the decision on trade mark registration has been made, and second, in Part III after the entry of a trade mark in the register of trade marks and service marks. International registrations are published for appeal in Part II of the Gazette.
Disputes concerning trademarks are resolved in the Industrial Property Board of Appeal, and in court.
In 2012 42 appeals and oppositions were granted. 20 of the granted oppositions concerned national trade marks and 19 international registrations. 3 oppositions, 2 of them concerning national trademarks and 1 concerning international registrations, were granted.
TOP 5 Registered trade marks in 2012
Estonia 841
USA 54
Switzerland 53
SoFinland 39
Latvia 22
TOP 5 International registrations of trade marks
entered into force in Estonia in 2012
Russia 270
Germany 184
China 144
Switzerland 119
France 108
TOP 5 Trade mark registrations valid in Estonia,
31.12.2012
Estonia 10 623
USA 4545
Germany 2688
Switzerland 1512
France 1225
International registrations of trade marks
valid in Estonia, 31.12.2012
Germany 7612
France 3004
Switzerland 2632
Russia 1910
Italy 1824
URLs of web pages of the Office’s website that provide statistics related to trademarks
http://www.epa.ee/client/default.asp?wa_id=565&wa_object_id=1&wa_id_key=
II. Matters concerning the generation, reproduction, and distribution of secondary sources of trademark information, i.e., trademark gazettes
Publishing, printing, copying techniques
The Estonian Utility Model Gazette – a quarterly, published since October 1994;
The Estonian Patent Gazette – 6 issues annually, published since December 1995;
Since 1 January 2003 the official gazettes of the Estonian Patent Office are available also electronically (in pdf-format, http://www.epa.ee/default.asp?id=512 and http://www.epa.ee/default.asp?id=513 ):
Techniques as recording, microfilming and photocomposing are not in use.
Main types of announcements of the Office in the field of trademark information
The Estonian Patent Office homepage at www.epa.ee was currently updated. Rss-reader was added. The homepage enables access to patent, utility model, industrial design, trademark and geographical indication registration information both in Estonian and English. It also contains all legal acts (Estonian legal acts are in Estonian), regulations and international agreements.
URLs of web pages of the Office’s website that provide access to online trademark gazettes and to other sources of trademark information, including download of bulk trademark data
http://www.epa.ee/default.asp?wa_id=576
III. Matters concerning classifying, reclassifying and indexing of trademark information
Classification and reclassification activities; Classification systems used, e.g., International Classification of Goods and Services for the Purposes of the Registration of Marks (Nice Classification), International Classification of the Figurative Elements of Marks (Vienna Classification), other classification (please indicate whether goods and services for the registration of marks and whether the figurative elements of marks are classified by your Office and, if so, which classification(s) is (are) used)
International Classifications (Nice Classification, Vienna Classification) of Goods and Services for the purpose of the registration of marks are used.
Before filing a registration application with The Patent Office, it is possible to submit an enquiry on registered and pending trademarks and to use the database of trademarks via the Internet which also includes international registrations of trademarks designating the Republic of Estonia.
International Classification of the Figurative Elements of Marks used in the Estonian Patent Office (in Estonian)
http://www.epa.ee/client/default.asp?wa_id=831&wa_id_key=
Obligation for applicants to use pre-defined terms of the classification applied
No such obligation.
IV. Trademark manual search file establishment and upkeep
The Estonian Patent Office does not use the manual search files.
V. Activities in the field of computerized trademark search systems
In-house systems (online/offline)
For those who are interested, including the Customs Authorities, Police and Commercial Register, the Trademark Database is available on the Internet. This contains data about registered and pending trade marks, as well as international registrations designating Estonia. The database is updated twice a week.
External databases
There is also possibility to use CTM-online via web page of the Estonian Patent Office.
Administrative management systems (e.g., register, legal status, statistics and administrative support)
Important event of 2012 for the Patent Office was transition from the area of government of the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications to the area of government of the Ministry of Justice, where all activities in the field of intellectual property were brought together. In the beginning of 2012 the Information Technology of the Patent Office was consolidated with the the Ministry of Justice related with the processing of the applications for legal protection of industrial property were transferred to the Centre of Registers and Information Systems. Therefore the Patent Office does not deal with the development and improvement of client oriented information technological services (incl. public databases, portal of electronic filing of applications etc.).
The work area of the Patent Office presumes processing of a large amount of information, which takes place in compliance with particular precise International agreements and is very standardized. Information technology facilities of the Office form a tightly coupling system and its functioning without failures is essential in the everyday work of the office.
The information system of processing at the Patent Office consists of six registers (register of trade and service marks, register of patents, register of geographical indications, register of European patents valid in Estonia, register of utility models, register of industrial designs), for the administration of which application software Common Software, database software Informix and operation system UNIX are used. The information system of processing is connected with the portal of electronic filing of applications for legal protection of industrial property via which the received applications are imported by the interface to the databases and from there the data to be published from the registers are sent to separately located search databases.
Equipment used (hardware, including the types of terminal and network used, and software), carriers used
To facilitate trademark examination procedure the software ACSEPTO of figurative and verbal searches is in use. It contains the data of Community trademarks and trademarks valid in Estonia, also data of the emblems, official control and warranty signs as well as the names of international intergovernmental organisations under protection in compliance with Article 6ter of Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property.
VI. Administration of trademark information products and services available to the public (relating to facilities, e.g., for lodging applications, registering trademarks, assisting clients with search procedures, obtaining official publications and registry extracts)
The Estonian Intellectual Property and Technology Transfer Centre is a non-profit organization founded by Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications and Estonian Chamber of Commerce.
The Estonian Intellectual Property and Technology Transfer Centre provides services to the general public. Main target group are small and medium sized enterprises (SME-s). The Estonian Intellectual Property and Technology Transfer Centre acquires, processes and maintains patent documents, patent gazettes and other patent and non-patent literature (the financial resources for it are allocated from the budget) and by exchange of publications with other industrial property offices under international agreements.
The Estonian Intellectual Property and Technology Transfer Centre have a library which is the only library that collects and processes patent literature in Estonia. The Centre participates in the interlibrary lending at the national or the international level. Lending requests are satisfied by e-mail or by ordinary mail.
The patent and trademark gazettes as well as reference literature and other materials, i.e. patent documents, are stored in the stock-rooms and are lended at the request of the users. The Estonian Intellectual Property and Technology Transfer Centre also stores the collection of the official gazettes and specifications of the Estonian Patent Office.
The users of the Centre can carry out searches using CD/DVD-ROMs at 8 workstations.
The following CD/DVD-ROM collections are available:
ESPACE ACCESS (until 2009)
ESPACE ACCESS EP-B (until 2011)
ESPACE ACCESS EPC (until 2009)
ESPACE BULLETIN
ESPACE LEGAL
ESPACE EP
ESPACE WORLD (until 2009)
ESPACE AT
ESPACE CH (until 2007)
ESPACE FI
ESPACE FR-A (until 2010)
ESPACE SI
ESPACE UK (until 2011)
German databases:
DEPAROM KOMPAKT (until 2011)
DEPAROM ACT (until 2011)
DEPAROM U (until 2011)
US collections:
USA App (until 2011)
USA Pat (until 2011)
Other countries:
PAJ Patent Abstracts of Japan
PAJ/INDEX
Patents of Russia (Full specifications) (until 2010)
ESPACE ACCESS-RFD (until 2011)
Utility models of Russia (until 2004, first pages)
The inventions protected in the Republic of Moldova (until 2008)
CNPATE-ACCESS
In-house online access is established to the commercial databases PatBase and Global Patent Index (GPI). These databases are charged on the bases of annual fees.
The Estonian Intellectual Property and Technology Transfer Centre offers copying services from paper. The users can order printouts of the documents on CD/DVD-ROMs. These services are offered for a moderate price.
The Centre also offers more advanced services – patent information researches: state-of-the-art search, freedom-to-operate search, technology monitoring, IP audit. User can claim for an advanced research in his favorite technical field, results will be analyzed and added to research report dossier.
Other services are free of charge: in the reading rooms the readers can use reference materials, monographs, other books and periodicals and carry out searches in patent documents
Information services available to the public (including computerized services and search files contained in libraries remote from your Office and trademark information posted by your Office on the World Wide Web)
http://veeb.patentinfo.ee/riksweb/
URLs of web pages of the Office's website for electronic filing of trademark applications
https://online.epa.ee/
URLs of web pages of the Office’s website that provide a description of information products and services offered by the Office (e.g., trademark search service(s) and trademark databases), as well as information on how to access and utilize them
http://www.epa.ee/client/default.asp?wa_id=916&wa_object_id=1&wa_id_key=
VII. Matters concerning mutual exchange of trademark documentation and information
Exchange of machine-readable information
Participation in TM-View project.
VIII. Matters concerning education and training, including technical assistance to developing countries (please indicate URLs of web pages of the Office’s website wherever appropriate)
Promotional activities (seminars, exhibitions, visits, advertising, etc.)
Cooperation with Tallinn City Enterprise continued successfully as well. On 2 October there was a subsequent Tallinn Entrepreneurship Day, where this time the formula of success was searched for. Proceeding from that the Small-Sized Enterprise Support Division arranged a seminar “Can Protection of Industrial Property Ensure the Success of the Enterprise? How Does It Work?“, where links between protection of inventions and trade marks, and success were highlighted.
Traditionally the Small-Sized Enterprise Support Division arranged two big seminars: in April a seminar “Protection of Industrial Property for Beginners“ celebrating the World Intellectual Property Day and in November a seminar on the link between patent protection and business model of the entrepreneur, software patents, business secrets, franchise etc. Theoretical side was illustrated with examples from the practice of industrial design and patent.
Training courses for national and foreign participants
The examiners of the Trademark Department proovide consultations on the issues related to trademarks in the office by phone and e-mail. 107 people were given consultations of about 59 hours in 2012. Presentations on trade marks were made at the regular trainings in the Office and also in the framework of Tallinn Entrepreneurship Day and the World Intellectual Property Day as well as at a county seminar in Rapla.
IX. Other general information related to the Office that is available on the Internet -- URLs of web pages of the Office’s website that:
provide information on legislation related to trademarks
http://www.epa.ee/client/default.asp?wa_id=456&wa_object_id=1&wa_id_key= (mainly in Estonian)
contain the Annual Report of the Office
http://www.epa.ee/client/default.asp?wa_id=922&wa_object_id=1&wa_id_key=
contain trademark-related news regarding the Office
http://www.epa.ee/rss.asp?wa_site_id=2
X. Other relevant matters