Ireland to continue applying relative grounds

http://www.deti.ie/science/ipr/tmcons_relativegrounds_outcome.htmThis comes from the excellent Class 46 blog: the Irish government has carried out a consultation and concluded that it should retain the present system under which trade mark applications are examined for relative grounds, and refused if there are any. Ah, the nostalgia ... The Department of Enterprise, Trade and Innovation says:

While a move to a ‘search and notify’ system would position the Patents Office alongside OHIM it would mean that, in the face of no response from prior rights holders (for whatever reason), the Office would end up registering marks that fail to perform the fundamental function required in Section 6(1) of the Act. There would not be any guarantee of origin and the integrity of the Register would be compromised.

Exactly. Which is just what is wrong with OHIM and the UK register, since we stopped refusing registrations that should not have been allowed through. The 'search and notify' approach is not only expensive for trade mark owners, it leaves too much scope for monopolisation of signs and for both those reasons is an obstacle to growth (except among trade mark practitioners).