Singapore will become the first Asian country to host a diplomatic conference in the field of intellectual property, which is a major one in order to revise a key international treaty, the existing Trademark Law Treaty (TLT), concluded in 1994 with a view to harmonizing and simplifying, on a worldwide basis, administrative procedures relating to national and regional trademark applications and the maintenance of trademark registrations.

Most of the provisions of the Trademark Law Treaty concern the procedure before the trademark office together with its requirements, as well as required documents. When seeking trademark protection, you must, as a first step, meet certain formality requirements in order to avoid rejection of their application and a consequent loss of rights. These formalities generally vary from one country to another and the Trademark Law Treaty has successfully introduced standard requirements to be followed in procedures before trademark offices.

The aim of the conference is to bring it in line with technological advances of the past decade and to simplify some legal requirements.

This revision will consider provisions regarding electronic filing of trademark applications and associated communications, formalities about the representation of all types of marks such as, for an example, hologram marks, color marks, position marks and motion marks, and provisions concerning the recording of trademark licenses.