Motivated by the desire to facilitate access to intellectual property and modernize its mechanisms, the Director of the French National Trademark Institute (INPI) issued a decision on April 15th, 2016 (Decision n°2016-69 of 15 April 2016 ) on the trademark registration opposition procedure.
According to the decision, from now on, anyone wishing to file an opposition must do so via an E-service, therefore fully accepting the Institute’s terms of use regarding the electroning filing of an opposition against a trademark registration as well as the use of E-Procedures. It is no longer possible to file such an opposition by any other means than the E-service.
In short, since May 1st, 2016, the French National Trademark Institute has made the online filing of an opposition to a trademark registration on the INPI website mandatory.
Futhermore, all subsequent exchanges and the submission of observations must be done exclusively via the online service of the Institute.