On 14 February 2019, in view of the forty-fourth meeting of the Council of Minister, the Italian government approved the implementation of (i) EU regulation 1257/2012 and Agreement on a Unified Patent Court, and (ii) new EU trademark regulation.
Obtaining a unitary patent, valid in all 26 EU Member States, will be possible by submitting a single request and at a significantly reduced cost. The unitary patent’s implementation is subject to the ratification of the Unified Patent Court Agreement by at least 13 Member States, already done by Italy. The Italian Patent and Trademark Office estimates that the agreement will be enforceable in the second half of 2019.
The new EU trademark regulation goes beyond the mere graphical reproduction and extends its protection to new types of trademarks such as motion marks, multimedia, holograms, olfactory, combinations of images and sounds, etc. In addition, special rules are provided for protected designation of origin (PDO) and protected geographical indication (PGI).
