Trademarks
A trademark is defined as being either a trade or service mark used to distinguish a person’s goods or services from similar goods or services of other persons. The classification system is adopted from the Nice Agreement Concerning the International Classification of Goods and Services for the Purposes of the Registration of Marks. Application for protection of a trademark must be made to the Estonian patent office.
The priority of a trade mark is determined either (i) based on the filing date of the registration application with the Estonian Patent Office, or (ii) based on the filing date of the first application for registration of the trade mark in a state party to the Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property (Convention priority) if the registration application is filed with the Estonian Patent Office within six months after the filing date of the first application.
Foreign applicants may only apply for a trademark through a patent agent.
Legal protection starts after registration, but retrospectively as of the filing date of the registration application of the trademark. Trademark registrations are valid for 10 years and are subject to further renewal for 10 years.
The holder of a trademark is required to use the trademark (use for the purpose of identifying its goods, or granting a licence to use the trademark will suffice). Lack of use for a period of 5 years is grounds for other parties to file a revocation application - invalidating the holder’s trademark registration.
Correspondingly, the trademark owner has the exclusive right to use the trademark. This means the right to prohibit use of a trademark which is identical or confusingly similar to the registered trademark by other persons in order to designate the same or similar goods and services.
Copyright
The Copyright Act provides authors with the copyright to their work without any prior registration. Therefore all works are covered with a copyright simply from having been created.
Author’s rights are divided into two groups: moral and economic rights.
The moral rights are not transferable either during the lifetime of the author nor after his/her death. However the author has the right to grant a licence to third persons to use the moral rights, and after his death this right passes on to the author’s successors based on law. Moral rights include for example the right to use or not use the author’s name or pen name on the work, and the rights to translate, modify, and supplement the work.
Economic rights, in contrast, may be transferred to other persons.
Patents
The legal philosophical basis for granting patent protection is a social agreement: in exchange for the inventor’s input into the general development of science and engineering, society will provide the right to use the invention exclusively for his/her own purposes for a specified term and receive profits from such use. Accordingly, patents are subject to a time-limit. The term of a patent in Estonia, as in most European states, is up to 20 years.
An invention is patentable if it is new, involves an inventive step and is susceptible to industrial application. An invention in itself is not directly defined in the legislation of Estonia. In this context an invention means a solution to technical problems.
A patent application must be made to the Estonian patent office and contain the mandatory information required by the Act. Patent applications are filed in Estonian, except abstracts of the subject matter of the invention which are filed in Estonian and English.
Other Intellectual Property Rights
In addition to the foregoing, Estonian legislation provides for protection of utility models, industrial designs, lay-out designs of integrated circuits and geographical indications.
(To be continued)
Estonian Business Law: A Comprehensive Summary (17)
Archived Articles | 05 Nov 2002 | EL (Estonian Life)EWR
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