MW Trademarks Ltd: Registered in England under No.971833495 VAT No.6879717 Registered office: Rapier House 40-46 Lamb’s Conduit Street, London WC1N 3LJ England

UKIPO TO INTRODUCE NEW FEE STRUCTURES AND SERVICES ON 1OCTOBER

To make the process of applying for a UK trade mark even more attractive the UKIPO has:-

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reduced the official fees for filing applications on-line

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made the full payment of fees dependent upon the results of the substantive examination of theapplicationIn addition, the following changes will occur:-

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a reduction of the number of series marks allowed in any one application

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an increase in fees for filing an extension of timeAll of this will take effect from 1 October 2009.

For the first two months under the new practice, MW Trade Marks will provide a 10% discount on our filing service charge if you wish to take advantage of the reduction in official fees for on-line filings that the UKIPOare offering.

Reduction of on-line filing fees

From 1 October applications made via on-line filing, if accompanied by full payment of the official fees at thesame time as filing, will qualify for a discount of £30 on the total cost of the official fees.Applications by post or fax or those using the grace period to delay the payment of the fees will not be entitledto the £30 reduction.

Right Start service

A new service has been introduced which is intended to prevent applicants spending money on applications thatare unlikely to proceed to registration. It is called the Right Start service.If you choose this method of application, you will pay half of the official fees at the time of filing followingwhich the application will be examined and an examination report will issue telling us of any problems theapplication has encountered. At this time, you have the choice of whether to proceed or not.

MW Trademarks Ltd: Registered in England under No.971833495 VAT No.6879717 Registered office: Rapier House 40-46 Lamb’s Conduit Street, London WC1N 3LJ England

If you decide “yes”, then you will need to pay the other half of the fees before your application can proceed. If there are problems which make you decide not to proceed, you can simply abandon the application then,without paying any additional official fees.By way of example, if you apply for a mark in two classes the official fees will be £250. If you proceed with theRight Start service and file on-line and make payment when the application is filed, then you would pay half the official fee of £125 and the other half after you receive the examination report, if you decide to go aheadwith the application.The following rules apply for the Right Start service:-

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Applications must be filed on-line and the official fees paid at the same time;

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Payment of the second half of the fees must be made through the UKIPO on-line payment servicewithin 14 days of the date of the examination report.Unfortunately the £30 on-line discount will not apply to applications filed through Right Start.

Series marks

Currently, it is possible to apply for an unlimited number of series marks in one application provided they arevery close to each other and are not considered different. An example of an acceptable series would be:

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“BLOGGO, BLOGGOS, bloggo, bloggos” as a series of four.Where marks filed as a series are considered by the UKIPO to not form a series, under current practice we canseparate out the marks into a separate application(s) to progress them, but after 1 October we will need todelete them and/or re-file.Currently there are no official fee cost implications for examining a series of marks and nor is there any limitto the number of marks that can be included in a series application, but all this is soon to change.The maximum number of marks forming a series will be six and a £50 fee will be applied to examination of thethird to sixth marks in a series.

Extensions of time

At present official fees for extensions of time in opposition, revocation or invalidation proceedings are £50. If a deadline is missed during prosecution of an application and a retrospective extension of time is applied for theofficial fee is also £50. After 1 October these fees will be increased to £100.

MW’s comment

The UKIPO has made filing a trade mark application a more attractive prospect by introducing a reduction tothe filing fee and providing the applicant an opportunity to fully consider any objections that are raised beforethe paying the outstanding balance of the official fee. Therefore, applicants will be able to budget moreeffectively and spread the official filing costs over a greater period.