Letter of Consent is available?

What is Letter of Consent?

Letter of Consent means a document signed by a prior trademark owner verifying that the owner agrees to registration of your trademark application which is similar to the owner’s mark.

In some countries, you could prepare and submit a Letter of Consent to the Office to overcome the refusal based on the similarity to a prior trademark owned by others.

How about in Japan?

Unfortunately, Letter of Consent cannot help you to overcome the refusal in Japan.

Alternative option

Alternatively, you may consider resolving the refusal by so-called “Assignment-back” strategy.

It means the procedures like the followings:

1. You assign your trademark application to the prior trademark’s owner;
2. The Japan Patent Office approves the registration of your trademark application because owners of the conflicting marks become the same by the assignment;
3. You are assigned back the approved mark from the prior trademark’s owner.

By such procedures, co-existing of the marks could be achieved under the current Japanese practice.