Minister for Business, Enterprise and Innovation, Heather Humphreys TD, has introduced an overhaul of Irish trade mark law that will lead to lower costs and increased legal certainty for business.  This is the first major reform of trademark law in Ireland in over 20 years. The Statutory Instruments transposing the Directive came into effect on 14^th January 2019.

The introduction of changes to the law follows an EU Directive issued to harmonise the national laws of EU Member States.  It is hoped that this will reduce costs, provide greater legal certainty and streamline procedures in relation to trade marks.  The changes will also support anti-counterfeiting measures and provide up to date means by which to protect a trade mark.

Irish SME’s generally use national systems as they don’t see the need to protect their trade mark at a European level however, the new laws will achieve greater parallelism with the EUTM system and will facilitate cooperation between the Intellectual Property Offices of each member state and the European Intellectual Property Office.

The Minister for Training, Skills, Innovation, Research and Development, John Halligan T.D. said: “This modernisation of Irish and EU trade mark law is a positive step forward as it aims to ensure that the trade mark system continues to remain effective in meeting the needs of business as technology develops.”

Click here for information on the new changes.