Register a Trademark in Slovenia

Updated on Wednesday 30th March 2022

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In Slovenia you can register a trademark for patents, intellectual property, industrial designs, and certificates. Slovenia has signed the Madrid Agreement and is a member state of the European Union which enables a person to obtain a trademark protection in Slovenia if the registration process takes place within the European Union. The trademark protection is enabled in 27 member states of the European Union, Slovenia being one of them. Our Slovenian lawyers can guide you through the trademark registration process in Slovenia and other EU member states.

Trademark registration process in Slovenia

In order to start the registration process an application form must be submitted to the Slovenian Patent Office. The application must be submitted by a local agent that requires a non-legalized power of attorney. Foreign applicants do not need Slovenian residency to register for trademark protection.

In Slovenia there are 3 ways to register a trademark: a national trademark can be registered with the State Trademark Office, the community trademark can be registered with the O.H.I.M. system and is available for all EU member states and the international trademark can be registered with the W.I.P.O. system and thus, you can obtain protection for your trademark in Slovenia.

The Slovenian registration process for the trademark requires a formal and a substantial examination. The most important part of the examination is the classification and the descriptiveness of the trademark. If any of those are incorrect or if anything is missing it will be a reason for refusal.

The process of registering a trademark in Slovenia will take about 12 months from the application. The trademark will be published in the “Bilten za industrijsko lastnino” and a three month period must be concluded. Once the registration has been approved, you can obtain the Slovenian Certificate of Trademark Registration.

Validity of the trademark registration in Slovenia

The Slovenian trademark registration is valid for 10 years and can be renewed for another 10 years after its expiration. A trademark must be used within 5 years after receiving the registration otherwise it can be cancelled. Slovenia became increasingly more attractive for foreign investors over the years due to its open and beneficial economic and legislative climate, skilled workforce, excellent transport and ITC infrastructure, strategic position the center of Europe, its value chains, industry clusters and centers of excellence.

The country offers advantageous conditions for study and development, therefore the intellectual property regulations are an important part of the country’s legislation. Intellectual property in the Republic of Slovenia is regulated by the Copyright and Related Rights Act published on the 30^th of March 1995. This act provides laws protecting the rights of authors for their works of literature, science and art. These are copyright laws.

We invite you to watch a short presentation on trademark registration in Slovenia:

Performers, producers, broadcasting organizations and publishers are also protected. These are referred to as related rights. There are also regulations within the Act referring to the individual and collective management and enforcement of copyright and related rights. All works protected by this act must first be made available to the public, with the consent of the right holder. This disclosure usually takes the form of publication of the respective work.

Copyright works, as defined by the Right Act are individual intellectual creations expressed in any mode, in the domain of literature, science and art. The author of a work protected by copyright laws is entitled to exclusive moral and economic rights over its creation.

All types of adaptation, arrangements, translation and transformations of an existing work, will be deemed independent works. However, the Slovenian intellectual property law clearly states that the rights of authors of original work must not be infringed by these transformations. For more detailed and personalized information it would be advisable to ask for the legal advice of a qualified attorney in Slovenia.

What is the data on intellectual property registration in Slovenia?

From a legal point of view, the Slovenian law distinguishes between trademark registrations, patent registrations and industrial design registrations. This is given by the fact that the entities that regulate this matter make a distinction between the three categories mentioned here. In the list below, you can find out information on the data gathered by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), referring to Slovenia:

in 2011, Slovenia had 1,134 patent applications and 5,796 industrial design applications (the data for trademark registrations in Slovenia for that year is not available);
in 2018, Slovenia had 738 patent applications, 41,441 trademark applications and 5,681 industrial design applications;
in 2018, the trademark registrations of Slovenian residents accounted for only 5,520 cases (referring to class count) and the non-resident applications from Slovenia, for 3,887;
most of the trademark application requests in Slovenia were concluded from abroad (35,921);
in 2018, from all the patent applications, the local authorities had a total of 1,343 patents in force.

Important matters to know on trademark registration in Slovenia

If you want to start the legal process of registering a trademark in Slovenia, you should consider a set of legal aspects that have to be concluded as required. Our team of lawyers in Slovenia can present the entire list of aspects you should mind, but you can find out some of them in this section.

For instance, you must take into consideration that you will need to pay a processing fee, once you will submit the registration file. Then, for any trademark registered in this country, you have to select at least a class of goods or services that is attributed to your trademark.

This is a compulsory procedure, and you must know that if your trademark represents more types of goods or of services, you are allowed to select multiple classes of goods and services. If you are not sure on what types of classes you should select, you can refer to our team of lawyers in Slovenia.

In the case in which you want your trademark registration to be completed as soon as possible due to various legal reasons, you can opt to have your application treated as a priority by the local institutions, but in order to do this, you are required to complete a priority application.

If you do this step, please mind that the institutions have to be informed in a period of maximum three months since the moment when the trademark application is submitted. Another legal step that will take place once the application for the registration of a trademark is done is the opposing period.

This is a required legal procedure, in which any other party can oppose the registration of your trademark due to various possible intellectual property infringements. In Slovenia, a period of three months is granted for the opposition, calculated since the moment when the trademark application file is submitted.

In this case, if a party wants to oppose the registration of your trademark, the said party has to submit a notice of opposition, but no later that the three months period since the publication of the trademark application. The person opposing the registration of the trademark must pay a processing fee of EUR 75.

When this document is received, the Slovenian authorities have the obligation to attach this paper to the registration file of the respective trademark. Then, the next step is that each of the parties must provide evidence regarding their own trademark and the file will be further analyzed by the local institutions.

If you are not sure on what your rights will be in this particular situation, our team of lawyers in Slovenia can present the legal procedures that can derive from trademark opposition, and can also provide legal representation on the case. Still, it must be noted that the local authorities will provide a final decision on whether the trademark can be registered or not.

However, if there isn’t any party that will oppose the trademark in the three months period, then the applicant can easily benefit from trademark registration in Slovenia, as long as the said trademark respects the minimum conditions for registration. If the trademark respects all criteria, the local authorities will register it and, under the Slovenian laws, the trademark will benefit from trademark protection for a period of 10 years. Our law firm in Slovenia can present more details on how you can renew the trademark registration upon the expiration date.

There are several areas not protected by copyright laws, such as ideas, principles, discoveries, official texts, such as legislative or judicial texts, or for literary and artistic creations that belong to the Slovenian folklore. If you need representation for registering a trademark, our law firm in Slovenia can provide you with a number of services and legal advice on different matters. Please contact our attorneys in Slovenia for further information on this matter.