LAOS: New Allowance for Multi-class Applications for Trademarks

The Department of Intellectual Property of the Ministry of Science and Technology of the People’s Republic of Laos has issued a notice in which it informs that it will be allowing Multi-Class applications for trademarks as from the 1st of February of 2016.

The Notice No. 57/MOST.DIP. underlines the advantages of applying a multi-class application compared to the previous single-class system. Such as:

• Saving trademark registration fees when a lower cost is applied for additional class(es), while the first class is applied as a standard rate;
• Saving and simplifying trademark administration management, favourable in statistics and following trademark applications procedure;
• Saving trademark registration number resources; reducing examination workload and the time flame for examination trademark single application may be improved;
• Advantages of monitoring and implementation of procedures for renewal, avoid being overlooked when many trademarks are protected for other classes.

Laos’ interest and initiative in upgrading its filing system unequivocally takes a leap forward into aligning its Intellectual Property requirements to international standards that most countries follow.