IPOPHL adopts EU trademark database

MANILA, Philippines — The Intellectual Property Office of the Philippines (IPOPHL) has adopted the European Union’s trademark database to provide ease and help ensure success in local businesses’ trademark applications.

In a statement Monday, the IPOPHL said it is now using the EU’s harmonized database of goods and services (HDB), considered the largest multilingual trademark classification database in the world.

Through the EU’s HDB, applicants can choose from over 78,000 terms to describe the goods and services for which the mark is being applied for.

In applying for a trademark, it is necessary to describe the goods and services covered by the application to set the limits of the trademark protection and help IP offices determine if the mark is similar to another.

“Adopting the EU’s HDB ensures a smooth and more successful trademark application for local businesses filing at IP offices across the EU and foreign applicants filing at IPOPHL,” IPOPHL director general Rowel Barba said.

“This will eliminate the risk of being objected to or the application getting delayed over classification or description errors, in which case, would mean paying for a new application and waiting longer for a decision,” he said.

With the use of the EU HDB, he said businesses looking to apply for trademarks would be able to find out if their product or service marks would run in conflict with other marks and make an assessment before proceeding with the application.

He said the EU HDB also benefits those with registered marks by helping them monitor whether their marks are being infringed on and anticipate risks of future cancellation.

“For EU businesses, this greater harmonization between IPOPHL and EU-based IP offices can bring ease in trademark protection, possibly motivating them to set up more shops in or introduce more brands to the Philippines through export,” he said.

The recent development makes the IPOPHL the 17th IP office outside the EU and 85th out of all national and regional IP offices in the world to use the HDB.

Use of the EU HDB forms part of the IPOPHL and the EU IP Office’s deliverables under the ARISE Plus IP Rights program.

The five-year program, which started in 2018 and has €5.5 million worth of program funding from the EU, is being implemented to improve IP creation, protection, utilization, administration and enforcement across members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.