The stand is booked, the catalogue is printed, the samples are on their way, and nobody has filed the name. Things happen in that order almost every time, because a filing produces nothing visible and a trade show produces meetings. The trouble is that the two events are connected: the fair is the moment your name stops being something only your Asian customers have seen and becomes something a European competitor, a prospective distributor or a professional filer can read off a banner and copy into an application form.
What a single European filing actually covers
One application, filed with the Union's intellectual property office, produces a single right covering every member state at once. There is one file, one examination, one renewal to remember, and the right extends automatically to states that join later. That unity is also its weakness: the right stands or falls as a whole, so an earlier right held by somebody in a single member state can be enough to block the entire application. Filing nationally, country by country, remains possible and is occasionally the better answer — for a company selling in one country and nowhere else, or for a name that collides with an earlier right in a market it does not care about.
The second thing to understand is that the European system gives the right to whoever applied first, not to whoever used the name first. Years of sales in China, a domain name, a factory that has carried the name since it opened: none of that creates a right in Europe. Narrow exceptions exist, built around unregistered signs and bad faith, and they are exceptions — they are argued after the damage, in a procedure, with evidence, against somebody who holds a registration you do not. The ordinary way to own your name in Europe is to have filed it.
Why a trade show is the worst place to have filed nothing
A European fair gathers in one hall everybody with a reason to want your name: competitors who now know it exists, importers who will meet you once and decide later, and people whose business is filing the names they expect somebody to need. Your banner, your catalogue and your badge are a public disclosure of the brand you were going to protect eventually. The fair is also where the name first becomes worth filing against you, because it now has a face, a stand and an address. And it runs the other way too: an exhibitor whose sign infringes an earlier European right can be made to cover it over in the middle of the show, which is a poor way to meet a market.
What has to be decided before the application goes in
- The classes of goods and services. The right exists only for what you listed. Too narrow and the gap is where somebody else files; too broad and you invite an opposition from holders in sectors you will never enter, and later an attack for not using the mark there. List what you sell, what you are credibly about to sell, and the service that surrounds it — spare parts, installation, after-sales.
- The form of the mark. A word mark protects the name however it is written, in any font, any colour, any layout — which is usually the stronger and the cheaper right. A figurative mark protects the thing as drawn, and it goes stale the day the designer refreshes the logo. If you can only afford one, the word is normally the one to file.
- Latin characters, Chinese characters, or both. Decide what European customers will actually say, read and type. A Latin name chosen in China is sometimes unpronounceable here, sometimes already taken, sometimes unfortunate in one language of the Union. The Chinese characters deserve their own filing when they appear on the packaging, on the product itself, or in front of Chinese-speaking buyers in Europe — and they are protected as a sign, not as a translation of the Latin one.
- Whose name the mark is filed in. The company that owns the brand, and nobody else. Not the distributor who offered to handle it, not the employee who happens to live in Europe, not the trading company set up for one market. Getting a mark back out of the wrong hands is a procedure; putting the right name on the form is a line to fill in.
- The route. A European application, national applications in chosen countries, or an international registration designating the Union from a home registration you already hold. The third route is often overlooked by companies that already own the mark at home and assume Europe has to start from nothing.
Who can oppose, and what an opposition is
The office examines the application on its own grounds first: it refuses a sign that merely describes the goods, that has become generic, or that would deceive the public. What it does not do is refuse your sign because somebody else already holds a similar one — that is left to the holder of the earlier right to raise. So the application is published, and publication opens a window during which an opposition may be filed. Who may file one: the holder of an earlier European or national trade mark, the holder of an international registration covering the Union, and in certain conditions the user of an unregistered sign used in the course of trade. The procedure that follows is adversarial and written: each side files arguments and evidence, the office compares the signs and the goods and decides whether the public would be confused, and the decision can be appealed. It can end in refusal of the whole application, refusal for part of the classes only, withdrawal, or an agreement in which the two sides carve up the goods or the territory — coexistence agreements are common and are often the cheapest exit. What matters commercially is the calendar: an opposition suspends the certainty you were counting on, and it arrives exactly when you were about to commit to packaging, to a distributor and to a launch.
Why the clearance search happens before the filing, not after
A clearance search reads the registers for identical and similar signs in the classes you intend to claim: the European register, the national registers of the member states, and the international registrations that cover the Union. Done before you choose, it changes the name while the name costs nothing. Done after the catalogue has gone to print, it tells you what you can no longer do — and the bill is not the search, it is the artwork, the packaging, the moulds for the printed box, the domain, the marketplace listings and the buyers you have already told. A search is not a guarantee either: similarity is a judgement, not a lookup, and a near-miss that one examiner would allow another may not. What a search gives you is the chance to decide with the information, instead of discovering it from an opposition.
Put the filing in the calendar before the stand, not after it. If the fair is already too close for a search and a considered choice, file anyway and refine afterwards — what you are buying is the date, and the date is the whole asset. File in the company's name, start with the word mark, list the classes you actually sell in plus the service around them, and ask whether the Chinese characters need a filing of their own. Then keep the register entry somewhere a colleague can find it, with the renewal in a diary that outlives whoever set it.