UPDATE

The new trademark law in Romania allows to integrate the protection of local titles: it is an adaptation of local legislation – which came into force on the 31st of July 2020 – to the most recent European directives, for the purpose of greater harmonization of legislation in the European Union.

Specifically, holders of Romanian trademarks registrations or Romanian portions of international registrations granted before the 13th of July 2020, who claimed the entire title of a class of goods/services at the time of filing, have the possibility - by the 30th September 2020 - to declare that at the filing date their intention was to obtain protection in relation to other/additional goods or services beyond those covered by the literal meaning of the class title. This is the case provided that the newly designated goods/services appear in the alphabetical list classes in the Nice Classification in force on the filing date of the trademark in question.

As per established practice in Italy and in the European Union, in fact - unlike in the past - the title of a class is no longer considered suitable for understanding and protecting all the goods/services included in such class, since it is now necessary to define and detail the individual items for which protection is sought.

If no supplementary statement is filed, the current list of goods/services will be considered inclusive only of those goods/services clearly covered by the literal meaning of the items appearing in the title of the relevant class, a circumstance that depending on specific cases and concrete protection requirements can lead to a considerable erosion of protection.

For all of the above, we are available to our customers to analyze the trademark situation in this country and to provide any possible clarification and in-depth analysis.