4.1 Compliance report

Where the examiner considers that an application does not comply with the requirements of the Act, the applicant will be issued a Compliance Report. The Compliance Report will explain how the application does not comply with the requirements of the Act, and will invite the applicant to respond. The Compliance Report will give the applicant 12 months from the date of filing the application in New Zealand in which to respond or amend their application.²⁸

Where an application does not comply with the Act, but would comply with the Act if the applicant agreed to certain conditions, the Compliance Report will set out the areas of non-compliance and give the applicant the opportunity to agree to the conditions that would render the application compliant. If the applicant responds to the Compliance Report and agrees to the conditions, the application will then be accepted pursuant to section 40 of the Act.

If the applicant does not respond to or overcome the concerns raised by the examiner or does not agree to the conditions, the application will remain a non-compliant application and will be rejected or abandoned, as appropriate.

Further Compliance Reports may issue for a single application, all pursuant to section 41 of the Act. Where the applicant responds to the issues raised in the initial Compliance Report, but, despite this response, the application still does not comply with the requirements of the Act, IPONZ may issue the applicant a further Compliance Report.²⁹

Any additional Compliance Reports will either confirm the original deadline or where more than 10 months have elapsed from the filing of the application, set a new deadline in which the applicant must respond or amend its application.³⁰ The current IPONZ practice is that any new deadline will be two months from the date the further Compliance Report is issued. However, where more than three Compliance Reports have issued, this further two month time limit may be reduced.

Footnotes

²⁸Regulation 61 of the Regulations
²⁹Regulation 61(2) of the Regulations
³⁰As above, n36