The 33rd Session of the Nice Union Committee of Experts (CLIM/CE/33 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, from May 1 to 5, 2023.
The works of the CLIM/CE/33 Committee were attended by representatives of the Nice Union Member States, international governmental and non-governmental organizations. The committee was moderated by Sébastien Tinguely, chair elected in the current session.
The Republic of Moldova was represented in the CLIM/CE/33 Committee meeting by Victoria Pulbere, Deputy Head of the Trademarks and Industrial Design Department, State Agency on Intellectual Property (AGEPI).
Every year, the Nice Union Committee of Experts updates the classification according to market and user trends and needs. During this session, all the proposals submitted to CE3, around 500 terms, were examined.
The CE33 session had two stages:
- Voting stage (Vote 1) through the NCLRMS (Nice Classification Revision Management Solution) tool, until 31.03.2023, allowing Member States to vote on all proposals submitted to EC33.
- The remaining proposals, those that did not receive majority support in Vote 1, were subjected to further discussion within the meeting and subsequently a final vote (Vote 2) was made available to Member States to vote definitively on the remaining proposals.
Thus, for five days the documents were examined in accordance with the Work Agenda (CLIM/CE/33/1 PROV.2).
Several topics were discussed in the Committee, including the examination of the amendment, completion, transfer from one class to another, exclusion of existing terms and addition of new terms for the entire list of goods/services in ICGS.
In recent years, thanks to the advancement of virtual reality technology, many companies are investing in this parallel market. In these common three-dimensional spaces where users move freely (with their own identity or using an avatar), carry out social and commercial activities. Thus, for this session the Member States submitted a series of proposals with reference to virtual goods and services offered in the virtual environment.
According to the work agenda, discussions were addressed on the topic of “NFTs (acronym for Non-Fungible Token) and the Metaverse”, related to goods and services offered in the virtual environment, registration trends, classification issues, common practices on the mode of classification in the context of trademark registration. In this regard, the next version of ICGS will include a number of virtual goods and services offered in the virtual environment, which until now were not expressly provided for in ICGS.
All amendments accepted during the current session will take effect on January 1, 2024 (version NCL(12-2024)).
