Legalisation of Certified Copies of the Register of Community Trademarks and Designs

Pursuant to the provisions of Rules 84(6) and 89(5) of Commission Regulation (EC) No 2868/95 implementing the Council Regulation on the Community trade mark, and of Articles 74(4) and (5) of Commission Regulation (EC) No 2245/2002 implementing the Council Regulation on Community Designs, OHIM issues certified copies of the applications, certificates of registration or documents contained in the matters handled by it, as well as certified extracts of the Register of Community Trademarks or Designs.

In addition, some third countries require the authentication or legalisation of such certified copies before they can be admitted as the basis for a priority claim before their respective national Offices or as the foundation for a claim of any other kind before their authorities.

To that end, on 19 September 2000 the European Commission adopted a procedure, which was published in the Official Journal of the European Union, authorising the Head of the European Commission Representation in Spain to authenticate the signature of documents issued by OHIM.

The procedure is as follows: requests for certified copies must be sent to OHIM on the appropriate “Application for an Inspection of file” form, specifying in the relevant section that such copies are to be filed in a third country which requires them to be authenticated, and specifying in the appropriate place the third country/ies for which such legalisation is required.

OHIM will then issue the certified copies in the usual manner and will send them to the European Commission Representation in Spain at the following address:

Comisión Europea
Representación en España
Paseo de la Castellana, 46
E-28046 Madrid (Spain)
Tel: (34) 91 423 80 00

In addition, OHIM will also send a notification informing the applicant that the documents requested have been sent to the Representation.

Once the Representation has received the documents from OHIM, the Head of the Representation will certify the authenticity of the signature appearing therein, and the documents will then be sent to the address specified by the applicant in the original application for inspection, with the option of personally collecting the documents at the European Commission Representation in Madrid.

Should the applicant already have a certified copy, it can be sent by post or be presented personally to the office of the Representation in Madrid. The applicant must enclose together with the documents to be legalised a letter stating: who is applying for legalization (postal address and contact names), the country for which the legalization is sought and the address to which they want it to be sent or if they prefer to collect them in person, a contact telephone number.

In the case of certified copies downloaded directly from OHIM’s webpage, care should be taken that such copies have a good print quality and are duly stapled or bound

It should be noted that once the legalisation by the European Commission Representation has been obtained, the applicant must follow the appropriate procedures at the Embassy or Consulate of the third country (the destination of the documents) in Spain. Before accepting such documents, many countries also require subsequent legalisation by the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

We therefore advise applicants to contact the Embassy of the third country in question if they are not clear about the procedure to be followed. The contact addresses for the Embassies of the countries accredited in Spain can be found at the following link:

List of the diplomatic corps accredited in Spain.

Finally, OHIM would like to emphasise that neither it nor the Commission are responsible for the practices carried out, or the decisions taken, by the authorities of third countries in connection with the legalisation of documents issued by OHIM.

OHIM

Trade Marks

Legalisation of Certified Copies of the Register of Community Trademarks and Designs