US Trademark Registration and Georgian Law
Federal trademark registration in the United States is a procedure of American law with rules of its own — a non-Georgian registration system. For a Georgian applicant, however, the legal side of this route is real and precisely citable: Article 39 of the Georgian Law on Trademarks opens the Madrid Protocol gateway through Sakpatenti, while Article 11 establishes the priority window that protects the sequence between the Georgian and the American filings. This page explains how these two Georgian norms operate against an American ambition.
The Madrid Gateway — Article 39
Under Article 39, the law applies to trademarks whose protection is claimed under the Madrid Protocol, and an application for international registration must, in accordance with the procedure established by the Protocol, be filed with Sakpatenti. The application must be accompanied by a translation of the classification-grouped list of goods into English. This is precisely the route by which an international application resting on a Georgian base extends to many jurisdictions — whether the United States can be designated is a question of membership in the Madrid system and must be checked against the current list of members in each case. The English goods list matters especially here: it defines the scope of protection in every designated country simultaneously.
The Priority Window — Article 11
Planning filings in two countries begins with the rules of priority. A mark's priority is established by the filing date of the application at Sakpatenti, provided the formal-requirements examination fee is paid within no later than 15 calendar days of filing. Under convention priority the applicant relies on the date of the first filing in a Paris Convention member state if no more than 6 months have passed before the Georgian application; exhibition priority works within the same period, from the first day of display at an official or officially recognized international exhibition. The two priorities do not extend each other's terms.
The formal demands are strict: an applicant wishing to benefit by priority must notify Sakpatenti within one month of the filing date and submit the confirming documents within 3 months; the fee is likewise paid within one month. Different goods may be given different priorities, and where the same priority is shared, preference goes to the mark whose use in Georgia began earlier. It is exactly this window that protects the applicant from the risk that, between the Georgian filing and the filing abroad, someone else overtakes the mark.