On 18th May 2020, The Intellectual Property Office of Singapore (“IPOS”) issued its Circular No. 5/2020 superseding its earlier Circular No. 19/2004 dated 3 September 2004 with immediate effect.
Circular No.19/2004 stated that for applications lodged on or after 10 September 2004, the Registrar would not accept a specification consisting of the item “provision of news” per se, because the description, without further qualification, was considered vague. IPOS was of the view that the subject matter of the news provided and the purpose for which it is provided were important in determining the class to which it should fall under.
However, Circular No.5/2020 states that upon further review, the Registrar will now accept “provision of news” and analogous descriptions in Class 41 by assuming that they refer to “news reporters services”. The following are some examples of acceptable descriptions in Class 41:
- Provision of news
- Reporting of current affairs
- Providing information relating to current affairs
That said, if such services are filed in other classes, the corresponding subject matter or purpose of the services will have to be specified, in order to render them proper to the respective classes.
In addition, the Work Manual chapter on “Classification of Goods and Services” has been updated by IPOS to reflect the latest classification practices.