What happens when someone opposes your trade mark
An opposition is not the office refusing you. It is a third party asking the office to refuse you, which is a different problem with different exits.
You file. The office examines the application on absolute grounds — is the sign distinctive, is it merely descriptive, is it deceptive — and if it passes, the application is published. Publication is not a formality. It is an invitation to anyone who thinks your mark collides with theirs.
The window and the fee
At the EUIPO, an opposition must be filed within three months of publication of the EU trade mark application, and the opposition fee is €320. The window does not extend and it does not reopen: a proprietor who misses it has to attack the mark later by other, slower and more expensive routes.
National offices run the same idea on their own clocks. In Spain, for instance, the period to oppose after publication in the official bulletin is two months, and the applicant then has one month to reply.
The pause nobody expects
An EU opposition does not go straight to a fight. There is a cooling-off period first, during which the two sides are expected to talk, and a large share of oppositions end there — withdrawn, or settled with a limitation of the goods and services, or a coexistence agreement. This matters for how you react: the arrival of an opposition is the beginning of a negotiation far more often than it is the beginning of litigation.
Two things that are not the same
People use "objection" and "opposition" interchangeably and then make bad decisions. An objection comes from the office itself, on absolute grounds, and is about the sign: it says your mark is not distinctive, or describes the goods. An opposition comes from a third party, on relative grounds, and is about a conflict: someone has an earlier right and says yours is too close. The first you answer with argument about the sign; the second you answer with argument about the earlier right, or with a deal.
What it costs to lose
Not just the application fee, which is not refunded. The real cost is that by the time an opposition lands you have usually been trading under the name for months: website, packaging, signage, accounts, the invoices your customers file under that word. That is the bill a check is trying to avoid, and it is why the check is worth doing before the identity, not after.
Sources
- EUIPO · Oposición a una solicitud de marca de la Unión Europea
- OEPM · Tramitación de la solicitud de registro
- EUIPO · Tasas y pagos