On the 8th of November 2012 the Parliament of the Republic of Lithuania enacted the Law on the Ratification of the Singapore Treaty on the Law of trademarks. On the same day in accordance with implementation of the Treaty the Draft Amendments to the Law on trademarks of the Republic of Lithuania were approved.
The purpose of the International Treaty is to unify procedural regulations for the trademark registration in contracting states. Provisions in the Treaty are partially reiterated from the trademark Law Treaty 1994, which was also ratified by the Republic of Lithuania; however, the Treaty has a broader scope of application and aims towards the development of innovations in the field of communication technology. The greatest advantage of the Treaty is the harmonization of administrative trademark registration procedures, which allow to foresee and to minimize the situations, where due to the failure of meeting procedural requirements, the rights to the application or registration are lost. There are three main areas of the Singapore Treaty that can be distinguished: filing of applications for trade and (or) service marks, amendments after the registration of the trade mark (including licensing) and renewal of registration. Also, it is worth to notice that Singapore Treaty does not regulate the subject matters of substantive trade mark law (i.e. absolute and relative grounds for trademark registration and etc.).
Law on Ratification of the Singapore Treaty on the Law of trademarks will enter into force on the 1st of April 2013. According to the Article 28 paragraph 3 of Singapore Treaty on the Law of trademarks, Lithuania will become bound by this Treaty three months after the date on which it has deposited its ratification instrument.