The Essence of Monitoring — the Register and the Bulletin
Trademark monitoring means the systematic tracking of registration processes, terms and changes in legal status — both for one's own mark and against competitors' and blocking applications. The legal foundation of this system is the Georgian Law on Trademarks: under it, the registration of a mark is entered in the register of trademarks and the data are published in the bulletin. The register contains the representation of the mark, information about the holder, the priority and registration dates, and the list of goods grouped under the international classifier — exactly the data on which a confusion assessment is built.
Any interested person may, after submitting an appropriate application to Sakpatenti, examine the register's data and request a certified extract — a declaratory instrument that allows one's position in the competitive environment to be checked.
Monitoring International Registrations
Article 42 of the Law also regulates the international dimension: data on the international registration of a trademark are published in the journal of the International Bureau of the World Intellectual Property Organization. Where a positive decision is issued on granting protection in Georgia to an international mark, the date and number of the international registration are additionally published in the bulletin within one month of the decision. The appeal term is counted from the day of publication of that date and number in the bulletin — so for monitoring international marks, the publication date is the critical marker.
The Term of Registration and Its Renewal
Under Article 20 of the Law, the term of a trademark registration is 10 years, counted from the day of registration. The term may be extended by each subsequent 10 years, without limitation on the number of renewals — on the basis of an application and payment of the fee, which takes place during the final year of the term. Where the application is not filed or the fee not paid, the holder has 6 months from expiry to pay; if that term lapses, the registration is cancelled from the day of expiry, without a right of restoration. Moreover, where the registration was cancelled at the holder's request, its restoration is inadmissible.