EUIPO removes the requirement of graphic representability of trademarks

The European Union Intellectual Property Office abolished, since October 1, 2017, the requirement of graphic representability of the Trademarks. Before that date, in fact, a trademark, to be valid, had to be graphically representable. This requirement gave several problems to trademarks such as sound trademark, movement trademark, olfactory trademark and others. Famous cases (not all before EUIPO) are the trademark of Metro-Goldwyn- Mayer consisting of a “lion’s roar” (the famous roar at the beginning of the movies) refused because it was not sufficiently described: according to the examiner there where different lion roars and it was not clear which roar was protected. Now thanks to new formats and reproduction options is much easier to obtain protection
for sound marks, three-dimensional and multimedia. Indeed, in addition to jpg files previously supported, it is now possible to use 3D objects formats (OBJ, STL, X3D) video formats (MP4) and audio formats (MP3). The EUIPO provides the table below.