The transitional period following Brexit will come to an end on 31 December 2025. This has important consequences for your cloned UK trademarks and for your European Union trademarks.
Following Brexit, all EU trademarks were “cloned” into comparable United Kingdom (UK) trademarks to ensure that protection in the UK was preserved. During a five-year transitional period, use of those trademarks within the EU has been deemed valid use for the purposes of defending non-use revocation actions, not only in the EU but also in the UK.
However, as from 1 January 2026, only genuine use in the United Kingdom will be relevant for maintaining the validity of these cloned UK trademarks and for enforcing them against third parties, in opposition, invalidity or infringement proceedings based on the cloned trademark.
Similarly, from that date onwards, if an EU trademark is used solely in the United Kingdom, such use will no longer be sufficient to defend the trademark against a non-use revocation action, nor will it support opposition or invalidity proceedings against later EU trademarks.
What constitutes genuine use?
The use must be real commercial use, directed at customers in the relevant territory and carried out with the intention of creating or maintaining a market for the goods or services. Large-scale use is not required, but merely token use intended only to preserve the registration is insufficient.
Our recommendations
We advise you to review your trademark portfolio and ensure that use exists in the relevant territory for each trademark. If such use is currently lacking, please consider initiating it before 31 December 2025 and contact our Trademarks team at marcas@abg-ip.com for tailored professional advice.
