OHIM oppositions and quality checks: the Kats differ

It's only a short document, but the Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market (OHIM) "Quality of Decisions Service Standards 2008" -- brought to the IPKat's attention by his friend ITMA Treasurer Chris McLeod (Hammonds) -- makes gripping reading. OHIM, non-Europeans should remember, is the Alicante-based office that administers Europe's Community trade mark system.

Right: Kat fight, or OHIM opposition?

When it comes to the quality of decisions on absolute grounds that comply with OHIM quality criteria, OHIM expects 99% of its decisions to match up to its quality criteria, and in the third quarter the organisation exceed that by scoring a terrific 99.2% compliance rate. At the other end of the scale, 95% of opposition decisions are expected to comply with OHIM quality criteria but only 80.85% do so. To put it another way, virtually one opposition decision out of every five is potentially defective.

The IPKat is very worried about this. Is it a lack of adequate training and supervision, poor staff appointment policy, or what? OHIM's management tier should take a firm grip on this malaise and eradicate its causes, if users are not to lose confidence in OHIM oppositions and rely on (for example) national actions for cancellation instead.

Merpel's not so worried, though. In the first place, she says, oppositions are inherently more complex than absolute grounds decisions and there are lots more places they can go wrong. Secondly, the never-ending stream of Court of First Instance decisions on opposition issues is more difficult to keep up with. Thirdly, the fact that nearly 20% of opposition decisions fail to match up to OHIM quality criteria doesn't mean they're actually wrong. Look how many of us reach the right conclusions for the wrong reasons every day in IP matters -- and no-one usually notices ...!

Number of Google hits for 'right decisions wrong reasons': 5,280,000
The OHIM Quality Check System -- a helpful PowerPoint here