ROSPATENT and OHIM meeting in Alicante

As I coincidentally prepare a presentation on 'Trade Marks in Russia', I was interested to learn of ROSPATENT, the Russian IP Office's visit to OHIM at the end of last week.

Joining the TMView project was discussed. The Russian Trade Marks database is now on-line and they use established codes so hopefully this is something that can be implemented relatively easily. Russia's EU neighbours Finland and Latvia are the latest countries that will come on board TMView soon as reported on their website this Monday.

EuroClass "accession" could be something that requires substantial work and not being privy to discussions between the two Offices, I'll just have to speculate that ROSPATENT were looking at some practical pointers on how to get started/further progress. Compiling a list of acceptable terms for goods and services is a task for the Office concerned and Russia, not being an EU member, is not obliged to follow any kind of European harmonisation. As OHIM does not have Russian as an official language, if ROSPATENT was looking at a "quick" win by replicating OHIM's acceptable terms then this would still involve an enormous translation effort.

Russia's relationship with the EU - or perhaps more accurately, with certain EU states - is very much up-and-down. Political factors may play a part in how fast progress is made in bringing Russia into the family of TMView and EuroClass. Nevertheless, this appears a positive step in the direction of cooperation and OHIM should be commended on their international outreach efforts as should ROSPATENT for wanting to come on board.