Oppositions & Appeals

The Sudanese Trademark Office has recently announced the dissolution of its Appeal Committee.

This means that from now on, in accordance to article 16 (2) of the trademark's act, any refusal by the Registrar to register or to make an amendment, modification or limitation to a national trademark, or to an international trademark filled by the Madrid System, shall be subject to appeal to the court.

Article (16) of the trademark's act stipulates the following:

Past August 30, 2016, a trademark opposition system has come into effect in Mexico. The amendment to the Mexican IP Law was published in the Official Gazette June 1, 2016 and a new opposition has come alive, where before there was none. While the opposition system is most certainly welcome, taking into account that it will make it easier – and cheaper – for opponents to oppose published trademarks that might be deemed too similar to their previous trademarks, the new opposition system has some local peculiarities that might make it a strange beast for most foreign applicants.

Past April 20th, 2016 the Rwandan government has released an Official Gazette Special.

This important document, drafted in Kinyarwanda, French and English, makes effective recently promulgated laws and modifies various IP laws. The main changes are the following:

With its 17 March 2016 decision (case C-99/15), the European Court of Justice (hereinafter “ECJ”) has taken an important step towards European IP law harmonization, clearing all the doubts that were raised among scholars and European national courts.