Summary

Since 2011, the European Union Intellectual Property Network (EUIPN) (or its predecessor) has developed and published several common practices for harmonising European Union trademark law. Since the 2015 trademark law reform, the harmonisation of European Union trademark law through common practices has gained a legal basis. The harmonisation of practices will take place in a participatory and consensus-oriented transparent process and will be based on existing European Union law, including case law. Although Member States’ intellectual property offices are free to participate in or refrain from harmonising their practices, all common practices have so far been widely accepted. As a rule, the offices have expressed their willingness to adopt common practices.

In introducing the EUIPN, it has been stated that the aim of this form of cooperation is to achieve a genuine system of trademarks and designs in Europe. This means that common practices, services, and tools are used in the interests of intellectual property specialists and rights holders. The article explains the results achieved through cooperation on common practices and analyses how these contribute to the achievement of a ‘genuine trademark system’ in the context of trademark law.

The article provides an overview of common practices in trademark law. In doing so, the numerical sequence of common practices (which does not correspond to their chronological sequence anyway) is disregarded, and practices that are similar in terms of subject matter are grouped together. To date, 15 common practice documents have been published. Also noteworthy is an unnumbered document on new types of trademarks, whose function is comparable to common practices.