New trademark legislation

January 2019 brings significant changes on the Swedish trademark law as an updated version of the Swedish Trademark Act came into force on the first day of the year. The law is implementing the Trademark Directive 2015/2436 which aimed to modernize and simplify the European trademark system.

The updated Swedish Trademark Act transposes the European trademark law reform and mainly abolishes the requirement for graphical representation which simplifies the registration of sounds, holograms or other types of marks, depending on the future technical possibilities of PRV. According to the Trademark Directive 2015/2436, a sign should be permitted to be represented in any appropriate form using generally available technology and thus not necessarily by graphic means, as long as the representation offers satisfactory guarantees to that effect. In practice this means that the PRV should be able to register sounds, animations or multimedia files.

A second important amendment is that under the new law, the protection of trademarks is extended to include counterfeit goods even in cases where the goods only pass through Sweden without being placed on the market here.