Organization : Government of the Republic of Croatia
Facility : Trademark Protection Procedure
Country : Croatia
Website : https://gov.hr/en/trademarks/1446
What is Trademark Protection?
A trademark guarantees the owner the exclusive right to market the products and/or services bearing that mark. Trademark protection is an effective market tool used by manufacturers and service providers to protect the resources they invested in the promotion and marketing of their products and/or services. A trademark is an exclusive right to the sign used to distinguish the products and/or services of one entity from others in the context of commercial transactions.
Related / Similar Facility : Croatia Patent Protection Procedure
Trademark Protection Procedure
Although registering a trademark for the purpose of distinguishing goods and/or services is not mandatory when marketing products and/or services, it is very useful to protect certain aspects of the product by some form of intellectual property. This reduces the possibility of violation (also inadvertent) of other people’s rights and provides you with an effective tool for protecting your own rights.
The decision regarding the elements of your market identity that you want to protect with a trademark stems from the overall business strategy by which you individualize the product and make it recognizable and different from others.
A separate application shall be submitted for each sign you want to protect as a trademark, and an integral part of such application is the list of goods and/or services to which the mark refers, which shall be prepared in accordance with the International Classification of Goods and Services for the Purposes of the Registration of Marks (the Nice Classification).
International Classification of Goods and Services
The list of goods and/or services listed in the application cannot be subsequently expanded and shall be carefully prepared, as the list determines the scope of protection of the trademark in question.
If the list of goods and services consists of the heading of a class under the Nice Classification, the scope of protection will only include the goods/services deriving from the literal and unambiguous meaning of the term in the heading.
When filing a trademark application, for the purpose of submitting a correct alphabetical printout of goods/services within a certain class, it is recommended that you use the terms contained in the Croatian version of the TMclass database, a harmonized database of classification of goods and services of the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO), by performing a search on the website of the State Intellectual Property Office.
International Trademark Protection
Trademark protection is territory-based, i.e. the protection is valid only in the territory of the country in which the right is granted.
Protection on the territory of other countries can be achieved in the following ways:
** by submitting a separate application to the competent office of each country in which protection is required
** for the entire European Union, by filing an application for a European Union trademark (EUTM) directly with the competent trademark office of the European Union (European Union Intellectual Property Office, EUIPO) or through the Madrid system for the international registration of marks
** by filing an international application through the Madrid system for the international registration of marks which provides trademark protection in over 110 countries through a single application to the national or regional office where the basic trademark application or registration was filed.