Convention countries order update

20 August 2012

The following Orders come into force on 23 August 2012:

• The Patents, Designs and Trade Marks Convention Order 2012
• The Layout Designs (Eligible Countries) Amendment Order 2012

The Patents, Designs and Trade Marks Convention Order 2012 updates the list of countries that can be used to claim “convention priority” for a New Zealand Patent, Design or Trade Mark application, and now includes Samoa and Tonga.

Seven regional intellectual property (IP) offices, including the European Patent Office and the Office of Harmonisation in the Internal Market, have also been added. Convention priority can be claimed directly from applications to these regional IP offices.

Please note, that The International Bureau of WIPO (IB) is not a convention country. Applicants wishing to claim convention priority from an earlier international patent application (IB) must designate a convention country that they designated in the earlier IB application.

Read more information on the country code for convention countries.

The Layout Designs (Eligible Countries) Amendment Order 2012 updates the list of countries under which reciprocal protection of layout designs is recognised in New Zealand.

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