Croatia: Welcome to the EU!

Croatia joined the EU today (1 July 2013). From an intellectual property perspective Croatia will now be covered by Community Trade Marks and Registered Community Designs.

A page on the Irish Patents Office website does a good job of explaining the impact of Croatian accession on existing EU trade mark and design applications and registrations.

It also provides a useful reminder for trade mark owners to be vigilant to avoid the spammers who may take this opportunity to solicit for trade mark "services".

Ahead of accession, Croatia has already aligned its specification terms for trade marks - it being a harmonised Office on TMClass. It has yet to be integrated in the search facility of TMView but as it is possible to conduct on-line trade mark searches through the State Intellectual Property Office website we can anticipate that they will come aboard TMView quite soon. However, it is not yet possible to file on-line Community Trade Mark or Registered Community Design applications in the Croatian language through the OHIM website. I expect OHIM to offer a Croatian filing option soon.

Croatia becomes the 28th member state of the European Union joining:

Austria
Belgium*
Bulgaria
Cyprus
Czech Republic
Denmark
Estonia
Finland
France
Germany
Greece
Hungary
Ireland
Italy
Latvia
Lithuania
Luxembourg*
Malta
Netherlands*
Poland
Portugal
Romania
Slovakia
Slovenia
Spain
Sweden
United Kingdom

* part of Benelux for trade mark and design registration purposes

Croatia to join the EU

Croatia will join the EU on 1 July 2013.

From this date, Community Trade Marks and Registered Community Designs will be automatically extended to Croatia. No action will be required by the proprietors.

It will then become possible to file Community Trade Marks and applications for Registered Community Designs in the Croatian language.

Croatia becomes the second former Yugoslav republic to join the EU after Slovenia and will be the EU's 28th member in total.

It will be an added country to consider searching when filing a Community Trade Mark. Thankfully, it is not too expensive. Identical searches can be performed on the Croatian IPO's website.