European Union Intellectual Property Office
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| Agency overview | |
|---|---|
| Formed | 15 March 1994 |
| Jurisdiction | European Union |
| Headquarters | Alicante, Spain |
| Agency executives |
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| Key document | |
| Website | euipo |
The European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO, French: Office de l'Union européenne de la propriété intellectuelle), founded in 1994, is the European Union Agency responsible for the registration of the European Union trade mark (EUTM) and the registered Community design (RCD), two unitary intellectual property rights valid across the 28 Member States of the EU. Every year, it registers an average of 135 000 EU trade marks and close to 100 000 designs.
The EUIPO is based in Alicante, on the south-east coast of Spain, and there are five working languages at the Office – English, French, German, Italian and Spanish. The office also processes trade mark and design applications in 23 official languages of the EU.
EUIPO was formerly known as the Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market (OHMI). The OHMI underwent some reforms and the Office as well as several positions and the governing board were renamed to mirror these changes. Since March 2016, OHMI has been known by its current name. The head of the agency was changed from President to Executive Director.
The Office is in charge of managing the registration of the EU trade mark and the registered Community design and offers businesses and citizens exclusive rights for trade mark and design protection throughout the European Union (EU), with a single application.
The work of this EU agency extends beyond registration to cover the harmonisation of registration practices for trade marks and designs and the development of common IP management tools. This work is carried out in cooperation with the national and regional IP offices throughout the EU-28, user associations and other institutional partners with the objective of offering users of the trade mark and design system a similar registration experience, be it at national or at EU level.
Since 2012, the EUIPO has hosted the European Observatory on Infringements of Intellectual Property Rights, which brings public and private stakeholders together in the fight against piracy and counterfeiting.
The regulation establishing the EUIPO was adopted by the Council of the European Union in December 1993 and revised on two occasions, in 2009 and in 2015. It created the European Union trade mark (formerly known as the Community trade mark) as a legal instrument in European Union law and established the EUIPO (formerly known as Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market or OHIM) as an EU agency with legal, administrative and financial autonomy.
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