GCC Patent Office: further to the recent announcement by the GCC Patent Office we wish to elaborate more on the significant changes brought by the new amendment which will come into effect starting from January 1, 2023.
Firstly, the GCC Office will resume receiving patent applications (Paris convention and non-PCT) on behalf of Kingdom of Bahrain and State of Kuwait and examining them formally and substantively; i.e., the said jurisdictions’ national patent offices will have no role in the examination procedures of the patent applications as well as the related annuities that will be due before grant (maximum 2nd and 3rd year annuities). Secondly, the granted patent will only have legal effect in the jurisdiction of the national patent office that the applicant originally designated with the GCCPO (either Bahrain and/or Kuwait) and is not validated for all the GCC member states as per the previous practice. The third is the significant advantage in cost savings by using the GCC Patent Office route and that applicants will also be glad to note that the official filing fees which have been reduced for individual applicants to SAR 1,500 (USD 400) and for company applicants to SAR 3,000 (USD 800) per country /application instead of 2000 (USD 534) and 4000 (USD 1067) SAR respectively. The other official fees, including annuities, remain unaffected with the exception of official patent search fees, which have increased for individual applicants to SAR 1000 and for company applicants to SAR 2000 as opposed to 100 and 200 SAR, respectively.
The new procedure as adopted is as follows:
– File a Paris convention or national Patent before the GCC Patent Office and pay the prescribed official fees by designating Bahrain and/or Kuwait (at the current time which we hope will include other jurisdictions in the near future).
– Once the application is accepted legally and formally by the GCC Patent Offices, the applicant’s agent will be invited to pay the examination fees which will be decided on a case-to-case basis by notification by the patent office.
– Upon fulfilling the payment of the examination fees, the GCCPO will then undertake the substantive examination of the filed patent application.
– Post successful examination the patent grant notice is issued and accordingly the patent will be referred to the respective local Patent Offices (Kuwait and Bahrain).
– The electronic granted certificates will thereby be issued by the local Patent Offices (Kuwait and Bahrain) upon payment of the prescribed grant and publication fees.
Saudi Arabia: we are pleased to inform that following the deposit of its instrument of accession on 8 April 2022 to the Convention of 5 October 1961 Abolishing the Requirement of Legalization for Foreign Public Documents (1961 Apostille Convention); the Saudi authorities have started to accept Apostilled documents from December 7 2022 in place of Consular attested documents from countries that are party to the “convention’’. The above decision was enacted by Royal Decree number M/40 and was published in the Official Gazette number 4916 dated 7 January 2022. As such, Apostilled documents including POA are requested for handling patents, trademarks and designs actions.
GAZA: as part of updating the registry practices, the IPO has informed all agents operating in the jurisdiction regarding the adoption of the 11th Edition of Nice Classification for filing of trademarks and the 10th Edition of Locarno Classification while filing industrial design.