Lebanon has decided to adopt the Ninth Edition of the International Classification of Goods and Services for the purposes of the registration of Trademark under the Nice Agreement (Nice Classification) with effect from October 1, 2007. This has announced by Salwa Fa'aour, head of the Intellectual Property Office at the Lebanese Ministry of Economy and Trade.
The Intellectual Property Office of Lebanon has been accepting trademark applications for goods and services under the 9th edition of the Nice Classification as of the aforementioned date.
The Nice Classification consists of a classification of goods and services for the purposes of registering trademarks and service marks. It is based on a multilateral treaty administered by World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO). This treaty is called the Nice Agreement concerning the International Classification of Goods and Services for the Purpose of the Registration of Marks, which was concluded in 1957.
This Classification is commonly referred to as the Nice Classification. The Nice Agreement is open to States party to the Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property.
The trademark offices of the contracting States of the Nice Agreement are required to include in the official documents and publications the numbers of the classes of goods and/or services. Use of the Nice Classification by national offices has the advantage of filing applications with reference to a single classification system. The preparation of applications is thereby greatly simplified, as the goods and services to which a given mark applies will be classified in the same way in all countries that have adopted it.
The Nice Classification comprises the class headings accompanied by explanatory notes and an alphabetical list of goods and services, with the class in which each product or service is placed. The class headings describe in very broad terms the nature of the goods or services contained in each of the 34 classes of goods and 11 classes of services. In order to keep the Nice Classification up to date, it is continuously revised and a new edition is published every five years. The current one is its ninth edition and has been in force since January 1, 2007. The revision is carried out by a Committee of Experts set under the Nice Agreement. All states party to the Agreement are members of the Committee of Experts.
Although only 79 States are party to the Nice Agreement, the trademark offices of at least 147 States, as well as the International Bureau of WIPO, the African Intellectual Property Organisation (OAPI), the African Regional Intellectual Property Organisation (ARIPO), the Benelux Office for Intellectual Property (BOIP) and the Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market (Trade Marks and Designs) (OHIM) of the European Communities, actually use the Classification.
By Mohamed Ali Abou Sakr IP/IT Department
© Al Tamimi & Company 2007
