May 24, 2021
Guidelines for various TM changes in the Balkans
Here we seek to give a comprehensive look at various documents and requirements for when changes happen during the long life of a trade mark/ TM portfolio.
As these requirements frequently change, it is best to advise local representatives on case to case basis, each time.
1. Change of company name/ address
For the change of company address, apart from the fresh POA indicating the new address, in Kosovo excerpt from the Company Registry is still required and in Slovenia, they require a signed and notarized declaration on change of company address (bilingual draft can be provided by our office).
Change of postal code is considered as a change of company address.
For recording the name change, POA in new owner’s name and excerpt from the Company Registry indicating the change of company name is necessary.
A change of legal form is considered as a change of company name.
2. Merger = assignment
3. License
You can read more on the importance of licence recordal on our blog, here, we will only focus on the necessary formal steps to recordal itself.
In order to record a license, POAs in the names of licensor and licensee are required as well as a notarized license agreement.
4. Assignment
Besides a fresh POA in the new owner’s name, a declaration of assignment signed by both parties and notarized is needed.
We often provide our clients with bilingual drafts for the assignment – this way the text is as required by the law and it cuts down on translation costs.
The fine print:
POA – general requirements:
Serbia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, North Macedonia, Montenegro: simply signed
Croatia, Slovenia: simply signed, indicating the full name and position of the signatory & place of signing
Kosovo, Albania: signed, with mandatory company stamp
* All supporting documents must be provided in original.
** Any supporting document except for POA and bilingual declarations, must be translated into the local language and legalized by a Court Interpreter.
*** Generally, if a chain of recordals has taken place, each action must be recorded before the local IPOs. However, often it is possible to skip one or more steps, in which case we inform our clients that a one-step recordal is available.
