The start of the judicial and legislative year is already proving busy, and a decree dated 2 July amended, among other things, 35 articles of the Intellectual Property Code.
Not all the provisions merit equal attention, but three of them affect you directly.
The first, which has been the subject of much discussion within the profession and has consequences for you, is the partial anonymisation of online data on individual owners of trademarks, patents and designs. The available data will now be limited to surname, first names, town, and country. The postal address has therefore been removed.
This new provision, implemented through Articles R.712-8 and R.714-2 of the French Intellectual Property Code, immediately affects how we carry out our work. When we alert you to third-party trademark applications, we can no longer contact the applicant in advance by formal notice, as no postal address will be available.
The formal notice was often a useful preliminary step, particularly for applicants who were private individuals and were often unaware that they had acted in breach of prior rights; it yielded very good results. It also enabled us to establish contact with the applicant and discuss possible terms for an amicable settlement, thereby reducing litigation costs.
Now that there is no longer any possibility of prior contact, the only option is to file an opposition, which will allow us to obtain a physical address but will entail higher costs.
Our professional body, the CNCPI, has already requested a meeting with the INPI about this change. However, the French IP Office (INPI) is unlikely to reverse its decision, as this rule was introduced to comply with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
Another change with less significant impact is that the time limits for opposition decisions have been extended from 3 to 4 months.
Finally, the INPI is harmonising its procedures for assessing SME size in relation to patents: the 50 percent reduced fee for patents now applies to SMEs with fewer than 250 employees (compared with 1,000 previously), aligning them with European criteria.