WIPO - Trademark Law Treaty [Updated]

A new international treaty on trademarks, to be known as the Singapore Treaty on the Law of Trademarks in recognition of the country that hosted the final round of negotiations, was adopted on March 28, 2006 by member states of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). The new treaty concludes efforts by WIPO’s member states to update the 1994 Trademark Law Treaty (TLT) and bring it in line with the technological developments of the past decade.According to the press release from WIPO, the Singapore Treaty deals mainly with procedural aspects of trademark registration and licensing. It also creates a new Assembly of the contracting parties as a built-in review mechanism for administrative details of a less order.

In a nod to the current North-South divide on international IP issues, the press release also noted that during negotiations some developing and least developed states expressed concernabout their ability to fully benefit from the Treaty. These discussions resultedin a firm commitment by industrialized countries to provide adequate technicalassistance and other forms of support to strengthen the institutional capacityof those countries to enable them to take full advantage of the Treaty.

The Basic Proposal for a Revised Trademark Law Treaty is available here.The Basic Proposal for the Regulations under the Revised Trademark Law Treaty is available here.Other meeting dosuments are available here.

Rodney D. Ryder