SECTION 1

An application for a Community trade mark shall be filed, at the choice of the applicant: at the Office; at the central industrial property office of a Member State or at the Benelux Office for Intellectual Property. An application filed in this way shall have the same effect as if it had been filed on the same date at the Office. Where the application is filed at the central industrial property office of a Member State or at the Benelux Office for Intellectual Property, that office shall take all steps to forward the application to the Office within two weeks after filing. It may charge the applicant a fee which shall not exceed the administrative costs of receiving and forwarding the application. Applications referred to in paragraph 2 which reach the Office more than two months after filing shall be deemed to have been filed on the date on which the application reached the Office. Ten years after the entry into force of Regulation (EC) No 40/94, the Commission shall draw up a report on the operation of the system of filing applications for Community trade marks, together with any proposals for modifying this system. An application for a Community trade mark shall contain: a request for the registration of a Community trade mark; information identifying the applicant; a list of the goods or services in respect of which the registration is requested; a representation of the trade mark. The application for a Community trade mark shall be subject to the payment of the application fee and, when appropriate, of one or more class fees. An application for a Community trade mark must comply with the conditions laid down in the Implementing Regulation referred to in Article 162(1), hereinafter referred to as the ‘Implementing Regulation’. The date of filing of a Community trade mark application shall be the date on which documents containing the information specified in Article 26(1) are filed with the Office by the applicant or, if the application has been filed with the central office of a Member State or with the Benelux Office for Intellectual Property, with that office, subject to payment of the application fee within a period of one month of filing the abovementioned documents. Goods and services in respect of which Community trade marks are applied for shall be classified in conformity with the system of classification specified in the Implementing Regulation.

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Source: EUR-Lex (Cellar) · retrieved 2026-10-12 · Text as adopted (Official Journal); later amendments are not incorporated in this text.