When you file a new trade mark application with IP Australia, an examiner gets appointed to assess your trade mark against the criteria of registration that is set out in the Australian Trade Marks Act 1995, and these include a number of different requirements for registration. There are different reasons why your trade mark application […]

Certain fees, including the government fees to file a standard trade mark application, using a custom description of goods or services increased in October 2020. They have increased by $70 per class of goods or services. When you file a trade mark application, you have to specify the goods and/or services you’re filing a trade […]

When you choose a new brand, name, logo or other trade mark and you want to start using it as well as to register it it’s a good idea to conduct a trade mark search. There are two kinds of searches broadly speaking that you can conduct. One is a simple trade mark register search, […]

In Australia, it’s possible to have rights in a trade mark that is unregistered simply by virtue of using that trade mark. That is what’s referred to as a common law trade mark. And whilst it’s possible to enforce rights, in other words, to protect a common law trade mark, the cost of doing so […]

Once a trade mark application is filed it needs to be examined by IP Australia, and during examination, this sometimes leads to the examiner raising an objection that the trade mark is not sufficiently, inherently distinctive in relation to the goods or services that you’re claiming. This is because, by definition, a trade mark is […]