The 29th session of the Committee of Experts of the Nice Union (CLIM/EC/29 Committee) on the introduction of amendments and additions to the International Classification of Goods and Services for the Purposes of the Registration of Marks (ICGS) was held in Geneva, Switzerland, at the headquarters of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), from April 29 to May 3, 2019. Starting from 2013, sessions are held once a year. The Committee decides on any changes to be made to ICGS, which are published in the form of new editions every five years and new versions every year.

The works of the CLIM/EC/29 Committee have been attended by representatives from 39 EU Member States, representatives from 12 states as observers and representatives from 5 international governmental and non-governmental organizations.

The Republic of Moldova was represented by Victoria Pulbere, Head of the National Trademark Division of the State Agency on Intellectual Property (AGEPI).

The session was opened by Francis Gurry, WIPO Director General, who addressed a welcoming address to the participants in the event, the works being moderated by Monique Choiniere (United States of America) as president.

The documents were examined for five days in accordance with the Working Program (CLIM/CE/29/1 PROV.). The Committee examined the modification, completion, exclusion of existing terms, and the addition of new terms for the entire list of products/services in the ICGS.

Summary table of proposals for modifications and the detailed analysis of the proposed modifications can be accessed at the address https://www3.wipo.int/classifications/nef/nef-projects/ce292/ce292-a02_ibva.pdf.

Similarly, the proposals carried forward from the previous session (https://www3.wipo.int/classifications/nef/nef-projects/ce292/ce292-a01_i...) were also examined.

The amendment of the terms in the abstracts of classes 37, 38, 39, 40, 42, 44 and, respectively, of the explanatory notes of those classes of goods and services were also discussed during the meeting.

 During the previous sessions, it has been mentioned that in recent years the tendency to introduce national regional products (usually foodstuffs) into the ICGS has increased. A joint proposal was submitted by France, Italy, Switzerland and the United Kingdom, which called for a clearly “agreed” policy. Thus, it has been established that each term must be well-known and defined or understood in a way that allows for a clear classification. The term should be found in some of Oxford Dictionaries, Cambridge Dictionaries, Collins Dictionaries, etc.

The US request for potential restructuring of class 9 was also examined during this session, as with the development of technological, scientific and research fields, this class has become very voluminous. Following the discussions and proposals submitted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), it was decided to revise class 9.

Also, one of the Committee’s concerns is the future work of the e-forum Nice Classification module as well as the ways of completing online the relevant documents. In this context, the report on NCL-related IT systems was presented during the meeting.

All modifications accepted during the current session will take effect from 1 January 2020 (NCL(11-2020)).