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Guide To Registering A Trademark In Singapore

by: SimonRogove
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The Intellectual Property Office of Singapore (IPOS), being a statutory board under the Ministry of Law, is in charge of trademark registration in Singapore. Any applicant may either deal directly with the Registrar or hire a lawyer or any trademark agent as a go-between acting on his or her behalf.

Any trade mark in Singapore must be symbolised in graphic form. It must be a sign of some sort, represented by any letter, word, name, signature, number, device, brand, heading, label, ticket, shape, colour and aspect of packaging, either by itself or in any combination using these symbols. Singapore trade mark laws differ from those in countries such as the United States in that you need not provide evidence of use to register a trade mark.

Your main concern when filing any trade mark design is that no one else had already registered a sign that is identical or similar to yours. This is particularly pertinent when it comes to the nature of your business activities. You should perform a thorough search of trade mark signs that are already filed with the Singapore Registry of Trade Marks and available for public scrutiny at the IPOS office or via the eTradeMarks website online.

Upon verifying that no prior trademarks exist that may conflict with the one being applied for, the applicant may already submit the completed trademark registration application to the Singapore Registry of Trademarks and Patents. Options for doing so include by hand, by registered post, or by filing online through the eTrademarks system. Filing fees for registering trademarks under each class is S$340 for manual processing and S$310 for online processing.

Once the IPOS has received the trademark application, the office will conduct an administrative review to verify that the application is complete and compliant with the provisions of the Trademarks Act, as well as all necessary fees having been already paid. When these conditions are met, a trademark application number will be provided, along with the date for filing.

In case there are grounds for objection, the Registry will inform the applicant of the corrections that need to be done within a specified timeframe. Failure to comply with these requirements in the allotted time will result in the application being classified as withdrawn.

A formal search for conflicting marks, geographical names and conformance to the international classification of goods and services will be conducted by the Registry Office. For pharmaceutical products, the Registry of Trade Marks will also check whether the marks consists of a protected International Non-Proprietary Name (INN), which are generic names for specific pharmaceutical substances furnished by the World Health Organization.

After completion of the trademark conflict discovery process, the examiner will check if the mark is registrable in accordance with Singapore Trademark Laws and that it does not fall into areas not allowed by law like a mark that is devoid of any distinctive character. The applicant will again be notified for any objections and the time granted to resolve such objections.

If the trademark is shown to be in compliance with Singapore law, the applicant will be informed that the application for registration has been accepted. This acceptance will be published in the Singapore Trademarks Journal to allow any parties wishing to oppose the registration process two months to file their claim. Examples of valid grounds for opposition of a trademark application include the situation where the application is similar to a registered or a pending trademark, and other similar cases.

The trademark will be registered and a registration certificate will be issued to the applicant if there are no further objections or all objections were resolved in favor of the applicant.

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Before doing business in Singapore, you should check out Singapore business guide and Singapore trade mark registration guidelines.

Guide To Registering A Trademark In Singapore

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