Amendments to the Austrian Patent and Trade Mark Acts 2010

End of December 2009, the Austrian Parliament enacted a significant Amendment to the Patent and Trade Mark Acts. The "Innovation Protection Amendment 2010" provided abolishment of 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 for compensation of this step. This amendment was effective from 1 January 2010 onwards so that the January 2010 annuities were already concerned.

The amendment 2010 also enables Austria to join the London Agreement. Parliament has announced to carefully consider the pros and cons for joining the London Agreement (including constitutional compliance) throughout 2010 in order to come to a decision whether Austria should join this Agreement or not. It will also be analysed which supplementary legislation will be necessitated by accession to the London Agreement.

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

The present 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 6 July 1998) in Austria, especially with respect to medical, ethical, economical 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 (www.parlament.gv.at).

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

Dr. Daniel Alge