The so called Madrid System is a centralized filing procedure that allows extension of national or regional trademark protection at global level, administered by the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO).
On 1 February 2023, some changes to the Madrid System rules came into effect.
In this short blog post we would like to bring the readers´ attention to one of the changes, specifically the one related to the Filing of non-traditional trade marks, such as sound, motion and multimedia marks.
In particular, until now, the international application required a “reproduction” of the mark, i.e. a graphic representation, included in the appropriate box of WIPO’s application form. This requirement was obviously an obstacle for a sound or a multimedia trademark to be easily described in the application form.
According to the recent amendments, the applicant can now provide a visual representation of the sign or, alternatively, the sign can also be submitted in a single digital file. Allowed formats are:
- JPEG, PNG or TIFF for pictures;
- WAV or MP3 (not exceeding 5 MB) for sounds; and
- MP4 (not exceeding 20 MB) for videos
This is a great news for companies or individuals willing to extend their “non-traditional” brands overseas (for example, a distinctive jingle) , since it will be easier now to correctly identify such new types of signs in the international trademarks application forms.
For further information regarding the protection of your brand globally do not hesitate to contact us to info@ipwisely.com
