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How to eSign a document: online signature legitimateness for Trademark Assignment Agreement in Australia

uh welcome everyone to our series on intellectual property rights and exporting for small and medium businesses I am Sarah Cannon and I'm an assistant general manager in IP Australia's trademarks and Designs group before we get started and in the spirit of reconciliation IP Australia acknowledges to traditional custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land sea and community we pay our respects to their Elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people joining us today So today we're going to focus on the practicalities of filing an international trademark registration via the Madrid system Jasmine will walk you through how to find the Madrid system e-filing page and how to fill out the international application form Stephanie who's joining us from the world intellectual property organization which you may hear referred to during the presentation as waipu will show you how to track the progress of your International registration and in the last 20 minutes or so we'll have a question and answer session with our panelists so in our last webinar we spoke about the Madrid system if you missed it we encourage you to review review the recording recording and it can be found on IP Australia's YouTube account and there will be a link in the chat but as a brief recap the Madrid system is one way to file a trademark application overseas the Madrid system is administered by the world intellectual property organization and it allows you to apply for and manage your trademark in multiple just multiple jurisdictions through a centralized process the result of a Madrid system application is known as an international registration we're going to use slido to manage audience questions so to use slider you can follow the link in the chat or enter hashtag Madrid system all one word in slido.com so panelists can I ask that you introduce yourselves hello my name's uh Jasmine Taylor I'm a policy officer with a trademark an international coordination section at IP Australia I have previously worked as a trademark attorney filing International registrations for Australian businesses including for well-known brands I will pass on to our next uh presenter Stephanie oh I believe yeah foreign hello everyone my name is Stephanie amwako and I work as a customer relation assistant for the Madrid info line unit at waipo and my role is to assist the Madrid users into their registration application processes and also helping them manage their trademark hi I'm Dave Murphy I'm a customer operations specialist at IP Australia and I've been in the international team for over three years good morning everyone my name's Ian arentz I'm an examiner at waipu in the team that looks after Australian applications before they're sent to the designated offices prior to taking up the role at waipo I was a trademark examiner at IP Australia thank you very much Jasmine Stephanie Dave and Ian so to get us started Jasmine I'll pass over to you to demonstrate the e-filing form thank you very much Sarah hello everyone um I will first to show you how to find the Madrid system e-filing page from the IPL Australia website and then I will walk you through an example of how to fill out the application for an international registration if you think of any questions as we walk through please pop them into slido oh that's slido.com and the hashtag is Madrid system and we will have an opportunity to answer them at the end in order to file an application for an international registration you'll first need what's called a basic trademark so you will need an Australian trademark application or an Australian trademark registration for the purposes of this demonstration we'll assume that you already have an Australian trademark to be your basic and you will need that trademark number to go ahead with this process now here is the IP Australia website you will need to log in to the IP Australia portal by clicking login I'm already logged in here so it says back to dashboard in this section and so okay so now once you've logged in you've entered in your uh your your details to find the application form you can file put in international and this section will come up apply for international IP rights and here you can scroll down to take a trademark application overseas and log into ypo's Madrid e-filing service with your IP Australia account this will then automatically log you in to uh the e-filing and the Madrid system e-filing page and when you're doing this for the first time you will click on new application I've already pre-prepared an application that I prepared for this demonstration so here I'll click my draft so on this screen throughout this process some of your some of the details will be pre-populated and some details will need to be entered I'm here the Australia will pre-populate um and it will be Australia and the filing language is English the the logo sorry the applicant's reference is optional it's an internal reference document and the next thing uh you will need to do is import a trademark which is the basic application or trademark registration um so once this says import trademark click on that button and then it will show up your details here I've pre-populated some of the details and click ok so a common issue with this page is that the applicants try to put in multiple marks a majority of cases you should only use you can only use one trademark for each of the trademarks that you want to register internationally so the button import and other trademark should not be used in majority of cases in my example because I've already pre-populated some of the details uh it has changed to import another trademark in your case it will say import a trademark um so now we'll move on to the designated Contracting parties here you will need to decide which countries or regions you want to cover this is called designating this will depend the this will depend on where you're likely to use your trademark and the costs will increase the more jurisdictions that you choose and uh the costs vary by the IP offices in my example I'm going to use the US and the European Union uh up here you can find a link to further information for the jurisdictions that you have chosen and moving on to the applicant now the applicant is the owner of the international registration and it will populate from the trademark number that you imported earlier you will need to click the applicant here name regardless of whether this is correct or not in my case I'm using an IP Australia trademark so this is the details that it's populated if you try to click to proceed you will receive an error message saying that you need to pre-fill some of the details so once we click here now half of these details will be populated for you and the other half won't be populated turning to name this will pre-populate from the Australian trademark the imported earlier the owner of the international registration must be the same as the owner of the basic trademark if there are differences between the two you will likely receive a formalities letter from IP Australia stating that IP Australia is unable to certify this address will also pre-populate if changes need to be made suggest making it on the Australian trademark first before going ahead with this process the country will also pre-populate here and here you can enter in your email address a phone number is optional and coming down to the applicant type if the owner is a person then you can choose a natural person if the owner is a company or other legal entity then choose legal entity in this case because I'm using an IP Australia trademark the owner is the crown so not to complicate to things too much I'm just going to assume that this is an Australian company an Australian PTY LTD company and not the crown so turning to the legal nature the legal nature for an Australian company will mean its type is registered with Asic like a proprietary Company Limited by shares moving on to state in this context because this is an international form State here means uh the country we're assuming that this is an Australian company so the state is Australia the territory section is optional when you do this for the first time you go through this process it is blank um it means the state or territory where the legal entity is registered when you get to the validation section at the end the form will pre-populate Australia in this section depart despite what you put here so it will say Australia Australia if you come back to a draft like I have it will populate Australia in this section so moving on to the entitlement to file to be taught entitled to file an international application from Australia the applicant must be one of three things a national from Australia and uh be domiciled in Australia or have a real and effective industrial commercial establishment in Australia in our case because we're assuming that this is an Australian company we will click entitlement as a national I'm going to click ok and then moving on to the next section is the representative when you do this for the first time it will pre-populate other details from these basic Australian mark in this context the representative means before the world intellectual property organization a representative is usually a trademark attorney or a lawyer who is handling your trademark application on your behalf it's not necessary to have a representative to pursue this process however there's value in having a registered trademark attorney or a lawyer handle your application and they can assist with strategy and give you advice they also have a network of overseas Associates to act on your behalf before the various IP offices if you have a representative then they will take care of this form for you and you won't see it for now we'll assume that at least majority of people on this call are filing trademarks for themselves and their businesses and not engaging a professional uh so it may seem logical to just proceed with the information that it gives you automatically but you will receive an error if the email address down here is different to the applicant email address in the previous screen so if you're doing this for yourself then simply tick the Box the circle that says no and it will let you proceed ing to languages this will default to English here uh when designating the EU a second language is required otherwise the form will not let you proceed it doesn't matter which language you pick uh but the correspondence will still be sent to you in English in the correspondence section in our hypothetical we've made we've made an assumption that there is no representative uh so the current the correspondence section uh correspondence will be sent to the applicant so moving on to the Mark um this will pre-populate uh the default uh positions for you in our example the Mark is a logo Mark in color so the check box says that the Mark is in color the main thing to note for this little box is that the filing fees are higher for a trademark in color and the difference is about 450 Australian dollars unfortunately the only way to avoid the additional fee is to amend the Australian basic trademark to black and white first if you don't you will receive an irregularities letter so if your Mark has color in it then leave the Box text then turning to the next little box there is a distinction between the fact that the Mark is in color and claiming color as a distinctive feature of the mark unless there's a particular strategic reason for claiming color as a distinctive feature of your mark which a trademark attorney may be advised May provide you advice on then you may choose to leave the second box blank and turning to transliteration and translation these sections are only relevant if you have non-english words or characters in your trademark if your trademark has non-english characters like Japanese or Arabic characters then you must add in a transliteration and that means how the word is phonetically spelled in English only if your mark is is not in English then a translation is optional but including the translation of the mark may help avoid issues being raised by the IP officers of your jurisdiction down the line if you do need to include a translation then an English translation is sufficient these four sections are provide space for extra information and it's optional in our hypothetical uh we're not going to add or change anything here so moving on to the goods and services this page lets you select the goods and services for your international application calling from your Australian trademark in a straightforward case you might not choose to do anything here however one case one reason why you might want to change your goods and services is to delete an entire class which may reduce your filing fees if you click to check the classification button it will give you an indication on whether the description of goods and services of the Australian Mark are likely to be accepted by the world intellectual property Organization for example it looks like this if you do decide to make changes you must not add new goods or services or change the wording of the existing goods or services so the claim is broader than before so moving on to the next page we come to limitations the purpose of this page is to customize the description of goods to a particular jurisdiction that you have chosen different jurisdictions have different practices as to how the goods and services must be described this is something that requires knowledge of the practices of the IP offices and is one of those things that a registered trademark attorney might be able to strategize with you on if you would like to make limitations then this is the place to do it so moving on to the claim priorities if your Australian trademark was filed within the last six months then you can do what is called cleaning priority which basically means that your rights and international registration will be calculated from the day that you filed your application in Australia this page will automatically decide whether you're entitled to claim priority based on your Australian Market that you entered in at the beginning in our hypothetical our trademark was registered a few years ago so it hasn't given the option so moving on to seniority claim now you will only see this screen if you have designated the EU the seniority claim page is only relevant if you have a registration in the EU in an EU country for the same mark so the next page is a declaration of use this is required if you are seeking protection in the USA it basically asks you to declare that the applicant has an intention to use the trademark and a right to use the trademark in the USA the main part of the form that causes the most confusion is the fact that it requests a signature but the electronic form doesn't allow for a handwritten signature or an electronic signature to complete the signatures section type in a signature here is sufficient when you come back to a draft it actually adds the slashes when you type it in originally there will be no slashes that is sufficient so moving on to the next page is the attachments now this will automatically attach the the Declaration of use for the US uh you have the option of additional attachments here so the next page is fee calculations this page sets out the calculation of costs to file the international registration designating the jurisdictions that you have chosen if you click on show fee details it will give you a breakdown of the costs and it will only give you the Swiss franc amount next is the validation page on this page you can download a PDF summary of your application so most things are pretty self-explanatory but I just wanted to mention a couple of things when you get to territory here it automatically puts in Australia no matter what you put in the territory section earlier it will come up as Australia here in addition on the entitlement to file section if their entitlement is entitled as a national as we did earlier in the form um the the application summary will show no for both of these domiciled in the territory and real and effective industrial commercial establishment so the application is not complete at this point you still need to have a successful payment before it's considered filed so moving on to the next Pages payment and here are you have the option of paying with your current account at wipo or also your credit uh or PayPal once the payment is successful uh the summary page will become available and it looks something like this the important thing to look out for on this page is that the status is paid if it doesn't anything that payment has been made please get in contact with us and we will help you out so thank you very much that concludes the demonstration of the e-filing system that's great thank you very much Jasmine could you explain a little bit about what happens after an international application has been filed sure so once you've filed the international Regis the application for the international registration it will then go through a process of certification by IP Australia and once it's passed certification by IP Australia it will then be forwarded to the world intellectual property organization it might take a little while before the mark appears on the wiper database once it's with wipo it will then a formalities exam will then be conducted and if all goes smoothly a registration certificate for the international registration will be issued point a certificate for the registration does not mean that it's registered in all your jurisdictions once you've received that certificate of registration it will then be passed on to each of the IP offices that you have designated and it will go through a process of an opposition period in those individual IP offices if all goes smoothly then eventually your trademark will be registered in each of the jurisdictions that you have chosen but thank you very much and I will pass back to Sarah okay that's great so thank you very much Jasmine if Jasmine's presentation has raised any questions please add them into slido and again to use slido follow the link in the chat or enter Madrid system or one word in slido.com so now I'm going to pass over to Stephanie at the world intellectual property organization so that she can demonstrate how to check the status of your International registration online thank you Stephanie thank you very much Sarah um so I will now start a demonstration of the tool magic monitor as a reminder like it was just said please bear in mind that it is only after your application has been certified by IP Australia and submitted to us that you will be able to check the status of your application um in the metric monitor system so I will share my screen with you all right I hope that you can see my screen all right so um as you can see we are now on the waipu website and to find Madrid monitor you will need to go on our page imagine which is where we have regrouped all our online tools and services to help you file and manage your application um so now to find um the imagery page you will go on the menu put under protect and manage you click on the drop down menu and under trademark protection you have all the links here is imagery so you click on the link and you will find yourself on the imagery page as you can see here is an overview of most of our online services that you can that you can use if you have a wipe workout and here what we're looking for is this one monitor your registration use Madrid monitor to track the status of your international application or registration so from the imagery to page you will click on here get started and this is the screen that you will see when you arrive on the Madrid monitor page as you can see you have a main search bar and you also have a menu on the left where you can conduct a simple search a more advanced search a real-time search and also an image image search so um most of the Madrid users when they're looking for information usually they only have a reference number maybe an international registration number a basic registration or application number maybe they also have just a name the name of the applicant or the order of a trademark so I will show you how to conduct a simple search using one of these parameters to do that I will use one of our very own trademark patent scope that was registered by wipo so if you have the international registration number of a mark what you can do is that you will make sure you're under the simple search and in the search bar you will enter the irn number as you can see imagine monitor will also show you a list of suggestions most of the time for any data that you input it can be very convenient especially if you have a name or a word so here for the registration number it is enter then you click on the search icon and here you will see the mark that appears a very short summary of the basic information of the mark so this is how you will do the search with an international registration number just to show you if you have a name that includes several terms you will just have to do it a bit differently you have to use brackets and you will enter the name inside of the brackets so for patent scope I will enter all right so this is the name of the order of patent scope which is us and now you just do the search and you will see all the results with all the orders who have these terms in the name here is the brand that we were looking for this is patent scope so when you click on the records you will be taken to the current status screen so as the as a Madrid user you might wonder how you can interpret the information on this page so I will quickly um explain a few points when you are on the current status screen basically it is um divided in two parts you have the first part which is the current status and here you have the essentials essential basic information concerning the brand um typically you might find the date of the registration of this brand you can find the name and the address of the order of this registration you can also see here for which classes of goods and services this registration was inscribed and this is all the basic information and the second part when you scroll a bit down is what we call the transaction history and here you will see a small summary of the transaction history all the transactions that have been received um at the Matrix at the Madrid registry that have been examined and that have been inscribed to give you a quick example for the mark patent scope you can see here um that one of the first transaction was a decision from an IP office here it is a notice of a possible opposition that was sent by the office the IP office of Singapore you can see the date the publication date and um and if there is a document that you can download it will also appear here another quick example here we have received in 2006 a grams of protection from IP Australia and you can see again the publication dates as well as the documents a copy of the official document that was sent by IP Australia all you have to do is to click and then you can see and download the the copy of the notice lastly so it is in a chronological order you will see the latest transaction at the bottom and one of the latest transaction was a renewal request that was submitted in 26 um 2016 and as you can see we have renewed this Mark for another 10 years so this is the information that you can see on the current uh status screen now um maybe as a Madrid user you would like to see the information in a quicker or more condensed way let's say for example you just want to find uh the documents that were sent by IP offices for this trademark and you can do that by looking at the information here that is sorted by tabs you have the summary tab the buy office tab the documents Tab and the real status time tab sorry so this is the same information that you can find on the current status screen except they are sorted for example in this under the summary tab you have the transaction history again and um in the buy office you will see all the national original Ip offices who have already issued some decision for this Mark and here you just need to click on the drop down menu for each designation and you will see what was sent what was received for example for Australia here the grant of protection that was recorded appears here you can download the document from the IP office um same here for China you can see the notice of provisional refusal as well as the official document that was sent you can also simply look at the documents tab because not every IP offices sends a document with their decisions for some there is no document necessary so if you really want to make sure that you don't miss any documents just go under the documents Tab and there you will see all the designations that have sent a document with their decisions and they are all available for download I also want to show you the real-time status tab which is one that is very important for the Madrid users a lot of time you would like to know what is the status of your application or your registration what was the latest um decisions that were received by us the real-time status will show you in real time what are the transactions that were received by us examined by our examiners and recorded in the Madrid registry so for patent scope here for example um you can see again the grant of protection from Australia if you click here on the reference number you have a little summary um of the decision you have the office in this column you have the office that send us the IP office that send us the notice you have the inscription date so the date where we inscribed this uh Trend this decision in the married registry we have the notification date here you can see the date at which a notification was sent to the clients and to the other designated Contracting parties about this latest development and you have the date of the publication in The Gazette in the wiper Gazette um I can show you another example for example here in 2015 we have received a notice of invalidation from the United States the USPTO for this Mark um if you click on the reference number here you will see which office and the decision so the United States again the summary of this Mark and here which is also very interesting you have the possibility to download the document so if I click there you will see the notice of invalidation that was sent by the USPTO you can just consult it or you can also download it so this is for the real-time status um we can go back I will go back on the main screen I also wanted to show because uh at um in a lot of cases the Madrid users only have their basic application or registration number they might not have yet received a wipe application reference and they would like to know the status of their application so I can show you how to do that you will not use the simple search in that case what you would do is that you will go on the real-time search menu and there you can see that you can enter different type of reference number um to find the information so in the case of um patent scope I will show you how you can find information if you have let's say the basic registration number I will just need to go back and get it just a second please so I mean all right so I just retrieved the basic registration number to show you and I will go back on the main search page so let's say as a Madrid user you don't have yet the wipe reference number of your application and you still want to know the status or if we have at least received your request from your office of origin so you will go under real-time search and you can enter here the basic registration number or application number if you have it in my case it's the basic registration number and if you click on search then you will see the results with the basic registration number here you can see patent scope appears and you have the status of the of the well application so this is how you do if you only have a basic application or registration reference or if you have any other type of reference and you want to know the status all right um lastly I also wanted to show that um whatever so I also wanted to show you quickly that all the information that you see can be downloaded you also have you always have the option here to download uh one page at a time however um here in HTML PDF or XML format and um you also have the option to set up an alert every time there is a new update on the trademark and to do that you will need to click here the little um star icon to set up the alert you need to have a wiper account for to use this um this option but it's very convenient and I think this is all for the magic monitor demonstration I will pass you back to Sarah thank you very much thank you very much Stephanie uh so now that we've seen how to file an internet an international application and how to check its progress I'm going to open the four up to questions so please continue to add any questions that you may have entered later the hashtag can be seen on screen and again if you use the website it's Madrid system or one word so the first question we have is how long will it take to register my oops we've just lost the question here we go how long will that take to I'm sorry the lobby comes over my screen how long will it take to register my trademark in each country so um Ian do you want to answer that question for us that depends on the processes in the individual designated country that you've chosen so once wipo has received your application and processed the formalities we then forward it to the designated Contracting parties and then it goes through their normal examination process so it depends there might be issues raised in those countries which would then involved back and forth so it's um I can't give a date or a length of time because every case is unique so I'm sorry about that but that's the best answer I can give thank you very much um there is a requirement in the Madrid system that Marx will be read examined and if any objection is going to be raised it'll be within 12 to 18 months but it can vary as Ian just said it can take anywhere up to that period of time um so I will pass this question over to you Dave what is an irregularity letter and how do I respond uh when wiper receive your application from IP Australia they'll review it and if there's anything preventing the application for going to registration they'll issue an irregularity notice you'll receive a copy of that notice via email and the attachment will list the issues they've raised the timeline to respond which is generally three months and prompt you to make a response in the international application form itself so you need to access it again from basically the same place you filed it which is via IB Australia's online services portal in the international section and when you reopen the international application form you'll see the issue or issues listed with an answer box under each for you to type in your response uh or you can attach a letter if you prefer and when you've made that response and hit send the application will actually come back to IP Australia we will quickly review your response keep getting muted Dave you have been muted sorry I didn't like my answer um I'm not sure how far I got before I was muted so I'm assuming you've logged back into the international application form opened up again and typed in a response to the each of the irregularity issues raised and or attached a letter and when you've hit the send button the application form comes back to IP Australia and we will forward it to wipo you'll receive a notification email when we've done that and ultimately it's up to wiper to officially consider your response thank you very much the next question relates to the classification check done at wiper so it reads does the check classification only check against wiper classification or does it check against your designated jurisdictions as per the wiper goods and services the Madrid goods and services list I think that is so Stephanie could you explain about the classification check that's conducted at wiper you just need to unmute yes I will put an examination uh um question yes no problem no problem okay so in relation to the specific uh tool that IP Australia uses I'm not sure but when um an application comes into wiper and we examine the classification we check it against the nice terms and our and the Madrid goods and services manager and related terms now some countries do have differences to that where they accept some terms that other countries do not for example Australia does accept broad terms in their examination whereas the US does not oh okay sorry it is about the checkbox on the IP Australia form sorry so I'm not sure what background system it actually checks against so I'll pass back to Sarah thank you very much so Jasmine you might want to pick that one up in that case application uh uh box checks against the against the wiper classification so if those boxes are ticked uh when you saw me uh demonstrate that before um it is an indication that wiper will accept your application the description of the goods so it's not an indication that your goods will be accepted by the individual jurisdictions uh it comes in the limitations section is where you can customize those goods and services and that's where you need uh where it's valuable to have an expertise to do those custom tweaks or the uh the individual jurisdictions that you've designated but the classification tool just checks for the classification with wipo and not the individual jurisdictions and I hope that that has answered your question thank you uh thank you very much the next question is does the EU include the UK and so the answer to that is not anymore so an EU unitary trademark right no longer includes the UK um the next question is is there a way to find out how much it will cost before going through the application process so uh Jasmine I think you touched on the costs in your presentation do you want to elaborate on that a bit more sure what you can do uh if you don't want to go through the whole process to work out uh how much it's going to cost you can find the fee calculator on uh wipers website um perhaps um I might share my screen quickly and I can show you what it looks like so for example you have the fee calculator and then this is where you will uh type in the transaction I'm not going to step through all the steps uh but you can see that the the link is here and I've just typed in uh feed calculator for uh an international trademark registration we will also link it to uh at the end of the at the end of the webinar um and you will be able to follow the link there thank you thank you um very much so how long will it take to get a confirmation from the international markets will there be an application pending number that could be used in the interim so this question is a little bit similar to one we had before in regards how long will it take for each country to examine in the mark it can um take there's a short period of time between a mark being filed with IP Australia and it being sent out by wiper to the varying countries and you'll then get your International registration number in terms of confirmation of registration you will have that International registration number and you may be allocated a national number from the designated countries and you can use that to signify that you've applied for registered protection but obviously it won't be granted so I hope that answers that question um Dave this is similar to one that we asked before so I'll throw this one back to you what does provisional refusal mean uh provisional refusals similar to an adverse examination report that you might have received when you filed your Australian trademark so it's basically a letter from the trademark office in one of the countries you've nominated uh explaining that they can't accept it at the moment and you'll need to make a response and hopefully overcome the issues that that trademark office has raised um what do I do read the notice carefully because it will list what you need to overcome to gain protection in that particular country it will also list how you make that response um each country has its own preferred manner I guess and for instance the USA will require that response to be made via an attorney who's registered to practice in the USA there are some countries you can respond directly so read the notice carefully You may wish to consider legal advice particularly from an IP professional who is familiar with that particular country thank you very much and Ian I'll ask you to answer this one what happens if no provisional provisional refusal issues how do we know that the Mark is registered in a particular country um so no provisional refusal is issued the country should issue a grant of protection and you'll receive notification from this through the standard forms or you can as was demonstrated by Stephanie have a look on the Madrid monitor tool and you can see which countries have granted protection and which haven't that's great thank you and Stephanie I think this is a question for you can I subscribe to alerts in Madrid monitor to receive notifications when something happens to my mark um yes definitely so um maybe I can show you again quickly how you can do that I will share my I will share my screen briefly foreign so again you will have to go on the Madrid monitor to set up the alerts so you can go from the protect and manage menu and under the trademark protection you will click on our imagery page and here monitor your registration get started all right and there [Music] um so if you want you will have to enter the international registration number of the specific Mark for which you want to set up the alerts so you have to start by entering your reference number and there you can click on the records so when you're on the current status screen it is very easy you look on this banner and there you can see a little star alert me when document is updated so basically when you set up the alert you will receive a notification every time there is a new update in the in this uh for this Mark so if you receive a new decision a new transaction a document is uh ready to be uploaded you will need to click on the star but um I um I want to remind our users that you need a wipo account to use this feature so to do a wiper account is pretty easy you just need so from from any page on the wiper website you will click on the IP portal login where you will have the opportunity to create a wiper account once this is done then you go back to Madrid Monitor and from the current status screen you will be able to hear set up the alerts I hope this is clear that's great thank you very much um so I'm conscious of the time but I think we've got a couple of questions left so uh does the USA U.S office require a local representative when using the Madrid protocol um I will answer that one quickly and then I'll pass the next one over to Stephanie so the US office doesn't require a local representative when you initially file but if there is a concern with your application and a provisional refusal is issued then you will need to instruct a U.S attorney in order to respond so Stephanie I'm going to come back to you for the next question can you explain what happened Sarah yep oh I'm sorry to interrupt but I would just would like to add to your answer to this question very quickly um so you can find this information on the wiper website and if it is okay I can maybe quickly show uh the the users how to find out the information sure um so let me just share the screen again um yes so if you go on the wipe website more specifically if you go on the main page of the Madrid system and you can do that again by clicking the protect and manage menu and going on the Madrid the international trademark system page which is this page um I just want to remind the users that there is a tool that we have where you can find all the information on our Madrid map the Madrid members including the answer to that question so from the Madrid system web page if you click on this link in the first paragraph 130 countries you will be taken to the page about the members of the Madrid system and on this page if you scroll a bit down you have those menus the membership procedures declaration under the procedure menu you can see there is a link that says learn more about members procedures if you click that link you will be taken to our tool which is the Madrid member profile profiles where you can find basically all the most important and information on all the procedures concerning the members of the Madrid system so let's say as a Madrid user you don't have the time to give us a call and you would like to find this information you can go under Madrid member profiles and here you will enter the member that interests to interest is you so the United States here you can see it already appears here you can click and then you click next and here you will see that you can select which type of information you want to learn about this Madrid member you can simply put all available information general information or you can also look for the very specific information you need but since it is a quick demonstration what you can do is um I will show you here so you see under the general the information on procedures as a designated Contracting parties you see that you have this um here menu requirements of recall representation now if you want to know information on this topic you can tick the box and then click next and you will find the information and here as you can see a requirement of local representation it says that the order of a third party will be required to appoint a local representative for specific procedures before the office if the order has no address for service in the territory you also find all the requirements from the USPTO regarding local representation so that's um that was it I just wanted to show the users how they can also find this information on the website so thank you to our presenters and thank you to everyone for your engagement on screen are some resources to help you along your journey we will copy the links into the chat so you do not need to type them out and this webinar will also be available for download shortly I hope that the series has helped you make informed decisions about protecting your trademarks internationally so we'll end it here and we'll email the recording of today's webinar soon have a great evening everyone thank you very much