Patent and Trade Mark Acts amended

01 May 2010

At the end of December 2010, the Austrian Parliament enacted a significant amendment to the Patent and Trade Mark Acts. The Innovation Protection Amendment 2010 abolished annuities for the first five years for all national patents and for the first three years for all utility models. Annuities for the later years have been slightly raised to compensate for this step. This amendment was effective from January 1 2010 so the January 2010 annuities are already affected.

The amendment also enables Austria to join the London Agreement. Parliament has announced that it will carefully consider the pros and cons for joining the London Agreement (including constitutional compliance) during 2010 to decide whether or not Austria should join. It will also be analysed what supplementary legislation will be required by acceding to the London Agreement.

Austria has also introduced a claim fee for patent and utility model applications with more than 10 claims (€100 for each group of up to 10 additional claims).

The amendment also introduced the Biopatent Monitoring Committee into the Patent Act. This Committee had already reported twice to the Parliament with respect to the impact of the Biotech Patenting Directive (98/44/EC of July 6 1998) in Austria, especially with respect to medical, ethical, economic and scientific consequences. The next report to Parliament is due in 2012; then each three years. The 2006 and 2009 reports are publicly available at the homepage of the Austrian Parliament.

Concerning trade mark applications, the filing fee has been raised to €300, which includes the search fee and the registration fee. Furthermore a printing fee (the amount will be fixed in a separate regulation and will probably be €25) has to be paid. If the trade mark is not registered, an amount of €100 will be refunded. From July 1 2010, the possibility of an opposition procedure concerning trade marks will be introduced in Austria. The fee for an opposition will be about €150.