The Working Group on the Development of the Lisbon System, in its meeting held in Geneva on 14 – 16 June, recommended to the Assembly of the Lisbon Union the adoption of a number of amendments to the Common Regulations under the Lisbon Agreement for the Protection of Appellations of Origin and their International Registration and the Geneva Act of the Lisbon Agreement on Appellations of Origin and Geographical Indications.
The proposed amendments concerned Rule 7 (Entry in the International Register), Rule 8 (Fees), Rule 9 (Refusal), Rule 15 (Modifications) and Rule 16 (Renunciation of Protection). They can be found in the Annex to the Summary by the Chair, published following the Working Group meeting.
In particular, the proposed amendments to Rule 8(1)(ii) introduces a complementary fee of 300 CHF for additional modification(s) of an international registration submitted in the same request by a contracting Party. This is intended to make it cheaper for a country to obtain the modification of several international registrations concerning its appellations of origin and geographical indications protected under the Lisbon System (for instance if the respective product’s specifications have been modified at the national level), by submitting them under a single request. The fee for one single modification of an international registration would remain at 500 Swiss francs. The proposed amendments to the footnote clarify that these amounts would be reduced to 50 per cent for those international registrations referring to a geographical area of origin located in a least developed country (LDC). More information is available here.
Following the proposals of the Working Group on the Development of the Lisbon System the amendments were approved by the Assembly of the Lisbon Union during the Assemblies of the Member States of WIPO in July and will enter into force on January 1, 2023.
For more information on the WIPO Geneva Act, please visit the dedicated page on the oriGIn website.
