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BLOG@IP::JURPatent Attorney Axel H Horns' Blog on Intellectual Property Law.
Saturday, May 01, 2004OHIM in Trouble: Are six Minutes of Examination Time enough for each CTM Application?According to a report by IPKat, the entire OHIM Staff Committee has resigned on April 26, 2004. The former Staff Committee has issued a press release, blaming its decision on the failure of OHIM management to consult with the Committee, particularly on employment policy. The Committee has also voiced its concern at what it sees as a decline in the quality of granted Community trade marks (CTMs). According to the IPKat Blog, the main accusation is that OHIM is putting time targets before quality. In 2004, the target for examining each trade mark was cut from 11 minutes to just six minutes. In such a short period of time, errors are common. They claim that “The actual, legal quality of our work, the legal value of our product simply does not matter anymore.” Guidelines are not being updated and there is no harmonised practice in OHIM between the different services and the different Boards of Appeal. Moreover, staff are being forced to carry out tasks they were not hired or trained to do and the resultant decisions are unsatisfactory. Additionally, quality control is unsatisfactory and difficult files are being left aside in favour of easier files which are quicker to deal with. As a result, reports IPKat, according to the Staff Committee marks are not being properly examined, leaving them more vulnerable to cancellation.
If these reports should indeed turn out to be based on true facts, then it seems to be high time that the involved circles of the public step in into a more critical debate over the current practise at the OHIM. By launching appropriate reforms, it must be avoided that in addition to the quarrels over the quality of the patent examination procedures done by the various Patent Offices also another line of obvious weakness concerning the quality of the trade mark examination procedures comes up. See also  my earlier posting.
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