Skip to this Website’s global navigation, local navigation or content.
The Trade Marks and Designs Registration Office of the European Union
You are here: Home > Trade marks > Classification
As your trade mark serves to identify the origin of your goods or services and to differentiate them from those of yours competitors, the choice of the list of goods and services which must be included in a CTM application, together with the choice of the trade mark, determines the scope of protection.
The list of goods and services must be worded in such a way as to indicate clearly the nature of the goods and services, and to allow each item to be classified - preferably in only one class of the Nice Classification.
Please note that the original list of goods and services included in a CTM application cannot be extended but only limited. In other words, you may not add products or classes to the application originally filed.
When a CTM covers more than three classes of goods or services, an extra fee has to be paid for each additional class. Therefore, before filling in your CTM application form, we recommend that you consult the following different classification systems and tools:
EuroClass 2.0
OHIM has launched a new improved version of its popular EuroClass tool, incorporating the functions of the now obsolete EuroAce and EuroNice applications.
Goods and Services
Your trademark serves to differentiate your goods and services from those of your potential competitors in the marketplace, so when you file a trade mark application, it is important that you indicate very clearly for which goods and/or services your trade mark will be used.
Nice Classification
To put it very simply, all of the goods and services that we can find in the global marketplace are categorised by ‘classes’, based on an international agreement with a somewhat complicated name: The Nice Agreement Concerning the International Classification of Goods and Services for the Purposes of the Registration of Marks.
Basically, if something exists and can be marketed, be it goods or be it services, it is in one of the Nice Classification’s 45 classes.
Most people simply refer to it as the Nice Classification, and it classifies goods into classes 1 to 34, and services into classes 35 to 45. Each class is represented by a class heading which gives general information about the type of goods or services covered.
For example, the Class 25 heading says: “Clothing; footwear; headgear”, the Class 15 heading says “Musical instruments” and the Class 3 heading says “Bleaching preparations and other substances for laundry use; cleaning polishing, scouring and abrasive preparations; Soaps; perfumery, essential oils, cosmetics, hair lotions; dentifrices”.
When you make your trade mark application, the list of goods and services must be worded in such a way as to indicate clearly the nature of the goods and services, and to allow each item to be classified - preferably in only one class of the Nice Classification.
Also worth noting is that the original list of goods and services included in a CTM application cannot be extended but only limited. In other words, you may not add products or classes to the application originally filed.
At the time of filing, and included in the application fee, you can indicate any number of classes. However, if you choose more than three classes, a fee is payable for each class after the third one.
OHIM will apply the 10th edition of the Nice Classification as from 1 January 2012, according to a Communication of the President.
EuroClass
To make it easier, OHIM offers you EuroClass, a useful tool to assist you when filing your trade mark and when trying to organise your goods and services into the correct classes.
This tool helps you with the classification of goods and services, allowing you to compare the content of the national classification databases and the acceptance of goods and services in twenty national trade mark offices.
If you select a term from the result list that is shown as accepted by OHIM for your trademark application, you can guarantee that it will be automatically accepted by OHIM.
EuroClass also provides translations for goods and services and again shows the acceptance by each office.