For a business seeking to register or renew its trade marks or object to a competitor's trade marks – as well as for business's professional advisers – the efficiency, consistency, speed and costs of local trade mark registries are of great importance.
For those who deal directly with trade mark registries, the good, the bad and the ugly aspects of their local registry may be shared and discussed locally, but comparisons with other registries elsewhere in the world are not easily made.
By questioning local trade mark practitioners in some of the most important jurisdictions, we have sought to understand which registries perform best and which registries are underperforming relative to their peers. We also sought to learn which aspects of registry performance (including speed, consistency, efficiency and costs) are of most importance to the registries' customers.
The minimum standard of IP protection set out in the TRIPs Agreement, which came...