The Intellectual Property Department (“IPD”) is pleased to announce that a new set of Trade Marks Forms, Patents Forms and Designs Forms (“the new forms”) will come into effect from 16 May 2025.
One of the main features of the new forms is that a declaration for an agent’s confirmation of its local physical presence in compliance with relevant statutory requirements will be added to all relevant trade marks, patents and designs forms. To facilitate the conduct of due diligence concerning IP transactions, data fields for collecting the type and place of incorporation of IP owners, grantees, licensees/sub-licensees, mortgagees, etc. will be introduced for Forms T8, T10, T11, P9, P10, P19, D5 and D11. The data field “designated patent office” will be deleted from Forms P4 and P5. Other features of the new forms include revised IPD logo, updated drop-down list for selecting country/territory/area and certain textual amendments. The draft versions of the new forms are provided below for your advance information.
Trade Marks Forms
Patents Forms
Designs Forms
The new forms will be specified via Notices of Specification of Forms to be published in the HK IP Journal in May 2025 in accordance with section 74 of the Trade Marks Ordinance, section 150 of the Patents Ordinance and section 84 of the Registered Designs Ordnance, and will be used with effect from 16 May 2025. To facilitate the effective switchover to the new forms, transitional periods will be allowed for the use of current specified forms as set out below:
|
Types of Form |
Transitional periods |
|---|---|
|
All forms except Forms T10, T11, P19, and D5 |
16 May 2025 - 16 August 2025 |
|
Forms T10, T11, P19 and D5 |
16 May 2025 - 16 November 2025 |
Applicants/owners/agents are strongly encouraged to use the new forms during the transitional periods to dispense with the need of providing supplementary information to the Registries afterwards. Upon the expiry of the respective transitional periods, only the new forms will be accepted by the Registries.
Once the new forms become effective from 16 May 2025, all pending forms (i.e. forms prepared using the current specified forms) in e-filers’ accounts will be updated to the new forms. Any unsubmitted forms in the status “Ready for Submission/Payment” will return to the status “Draft” to allow e-filers to fill in the information required in the new forms. Registered e-filers are advised to submit all their completed forms before 16 May 2025.
As for one-time filers, all web-forms saved as drafts in XML files by “Save Draft” function before 16 May 2025 will become incompatible with the E-Filing System after the date. One-time filers are reminded to submit these draft forms before 16 May 2025.
The XSD Schemata of the B2B (system to system) E-Filing service will be revised following the launch of the new Forms T8, T10, T11, P4, P5, P9, P10 and D11. The revised set of XSD Schemata is available for download here.
Intellectual Property Department
28 January 2025