A Brief Digest on the International Trademark Registration in Thailand
The Department of Intellectual Property (DIP) in Thailand started getting international trademark applications under the protocol of the Madrid Agreement that concerns the International Registration of Marks on the 7th of November 2017.
As DIP receives any incoming international application, it will be responsible to translate all the details into Thai, while assigning a new Thai application number distinctive from the international number to the applicant.
However, since DIP’s translation of the applicants’ details is done without considering the consistency, the translation could vary every time it gets an incoming Madrid application from the same applicant.
The major thing about DIP’s similarity examination for the trademarks is that it focuses on identifying each mark’s owner. Similarity rejections are quite often used issued for the marks that are similar to previous marks of the same owner. So, even a missing comma may need a trademark owner to appeal to the Trademark Board against the citation of its earlier marks. Having said, this can be avoided by filing amendments in order to harmonize the name of the applicant in Thai for all the applications in Thailand.
Similarly, the DIP is responsible for the preparation of the list of goods/services claimed for the Thai translation. The examination of the goods/services descriptions is done on the basis of Thai translation.
In case any changes to be made to the goods/service descriptions, then DIP will require issuing a provisional refusal, including the suggested amendments (English). The process involves the DIP that;
1. Translates the goods/service description from English to Thai;
2. Makes the translated descriptions in line with the database;
3. Finds suggestions to amend rogue descriptions;
4. Translates suggestion into English
Such a procedure helps in appropriate trademark protection. Further, the Trademark Act and the Ministerial Regulations fix the deadline to respond to the Department of Intellectual Property office within 60 days from the date the application was received.
