Bahrain gives itself longer to refuse Madrid marks

The IPKat learns, via Madrid (Marks) Notification No. 177, that the Kingdom of Bahrain deposited with WIPO, on 7 February 2008, the following declaration:

"In accordance with Article 5(2)(d) of the Madrid Protocol (1989) and pursuant to Article 5(2)(b), the time limit of one year to exercise the right to notify a refusal of protection ... is replaced by 18 months and that, under Article 5(2)(c) of the said Protocol, where refusal of protection may result from an opposition to the granting of protection, such refusal may be notified after the expiry of the 18-month time limit".

Right: Bahrain -- paradise for architects, but is it purgatory for opposed international trade mark applicants?

This declaration enters into force for Bahrain on 7 May 2008.

Says the IPKat, opposed applicants for extension of their trade marks to Bahrain now have a longer period during which their fate is to be decided. He wonders why, given the wonderful new technologies that make the identification of evidence and the searching process so much easier, and decades of increasingly shared understanding as to what is distinctive, descriptive, confusingly similar and so on, it should still take so long to determine an opposition. Merpel says, hold on -- isn't the extra period advantageous to the Madrid applicant, who may need to prepare its response to an opposition in an unfamiliar jurisdiction?