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Major renumbering inconvenience ahead for European trade mark practitioners

By Johanna Gibson, David Pearce, Jeremy Phillips and Ilanah Simon.

Published this morning in the online version of the Official Journal of the European Communities is Council Regulation (EC) No 207/2009 of 26 February 2009 on the Community trade mark. This provision codifies Council Regulation 40/94 and its various minor amendments, which it repeals. The new Regulation comes into force 20 days after its date of publication (just add 20 days to today's date and you'll be heading in the right direction).

According to the correlation table at the back of the document, Articles 1 to 36 are more or less the same, following which things get more confusing.

Connoisseurs of logical stupidity will note with undiluted admiration that Article 8(5) -- the bit that doesn't mean what it says after the Court of Justice made nonsense of its phraseology -- remains untouched and unamended since this thunderingly inconvenient piece of legislative tidying up is a codification, not a reform.

Full post as published by IPKat on March 24, 2009 (boomark / email).