THE COSTS OF TRADEMARK REGISTRATION IN EURASIA

Published on 20 February 2018

In one of our previous articles, The Eurasian Patent Office: Offering Substantial Savings, we delved into the question of how much it costs to obtain a Eurasian patent. In this article, we shall have a discussion on the trademark filing and registration costs in the member countries of the Eurasian Economic Union ("EAEU").

Eurasian Economic Union

The Eurasian Economic Union is one of the newer international organizations for regional economic integration; it only recently came into existence in January 2015, with the signing of the Treaty on the Eurasian Economic Union in May 2014, by Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Russia. Its membership has subsequently expanded to five, with the induction of Armenia and Kyrgyzstan. The organization represents an "integrated single market of 183 million people and a gross domestic product (GDP) of over $4 trillion (PPP)" for the free movement of goods, capital, services, and people (Andrei Akulov; 2016).

Trademark System in the EAEU

Unlike the centralized Eurasian Patent Office located in Moscow, which was recently in the limelight for having received its 50,000th patent application, there is no centralized Eurasian Trademark Office. This means that registering a trademark in the member states of the EAEU will require the filing of five separate National trademark applications.

However, a Eurasian trademark system is on the anvil. The draft "Treaty on Trademarks, Service Marks and Appellations of Origin of the EAEU Goods" was approved by the Eurasian Economic Commission Council in March 2016. The Treaty, which envisages a "Eurasian Union Trademark", will enter into force once its ratification is completed by the member states. In February 2017, "Russia announced that it would seek to ratify" the Treaty (David Aylen; 2017).

Trademarks in the EAEU Countries

As per the World Intellectual Property Indicators 2017 published by the World Intellectual Property Organization, more than 300,000 trademark applications were filed collectively in the member states of the EAEU in the year 2016. This figure is comparable with that for the European Union Intellectual Property Office, which received close to 370,000 applications.

More than 80% of the trademark applications were filed in Russia, the most influential economy in Eurasia.

The Costs of Trademarks in Eurasia

Let us now discuss the costs involved in filing trademark applications in the EAEU member countries and, subsequently, getting them registered. Typically, there are three categories of costs involved: official fees, attorney charges, and translation costs.

For the purposes of this article, we shall consider trademark applications filed for protection under two classes with a priority claim to an application initially filed in the U.S.

The estimated costs of the trademark process under two classes in the EAEU countries, from filing through registration, add up to approximately $8,100 (Table 1). The costs are inclusive of the fee to translate one page into the official language in each of the five jurisdictions, which is between $60 and $87, in addition to Value Added Tax (where applicable).



The figure below depicts the stage-wise split-up of the estimated costs in each EAEU country.



Official Fees - Filing:

The approximate official fees to be paid at the time of filing (i.e. basic filing fee; basic examination fee; fee for filing in an additional class, if applicable; fee for examining a filing in an additional class, if applicable; and fee for claiming priority, if applicable) vary from $197 in Armenia to $502 in Belarus.

Official Fees - Registration:

The approximate official fees to be paid at the time of registration (registration fee, and, where applicable, fee for issuance of a certificate and publication fee) vary from $103 in Armenia to $313 in Russia.

International Trademark Cost Calculator

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Venkatesh Viswanath (Senior Analyst, Quantify IP) contributed to this article. Exchange Rates Used: 1 US Dollar = 483.16 Armenian Dram, 1.97 Belarusian Rubles, 69.46 Kyrgyzstan Som, 332.76 Kazakhstan Tenge, and 57.54 Russian Rubles